The public release of a Stamford police detective’s interrogation of the 19-year-old college student who leaked to Wikipedia on June 25, 2007, that Nancy Benoit was dead, more than half-a-day before the rest of the world knew it, appears to be at hand.
My battle over this record with both the Fayette County (Georgia) Sheriff’s Office and the Stamford Police Department consumed all of the summer and the first month of the fall, and was poised to culminate in a hearing at the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission on November 21. If today’s development holds true, next week I will ask the commission clerk to remove from the docket Irvin Muchnick v. Chief, Police Department, City of Stamford; and Police Department, City of Stamford (FIC 2008-493).
In an email this morning to commission attorney Tracie C. Brown, the ombudsman in our case, City of Stamford assistant corporation counsel Michael S. Toma said the city “will create a duplicate copy of the video and Fed Ex it to Mr. Muchnick (at city’s cost) … as early as Monday,” if I will agree to dismiss the complaint. Which, of course, I will.
The complete sequence of events:
* Fayette County’s February 2008 report closing the Chris Benoit double murder/suicide investigation said the Stamford interview of the Benoit Wikipedia hacker was “included in the case file,” though it was not listed among the open records that could be ordered by the media. When I applied for a copy (which had been reported to be on videotape), Fayette County dawdled on complying, then admitted that it had on hand only a three-minute snippet.
* Stamford explained that the snippet was a bad duplicate. Neither Fayette County nor Stamford would confirm that the latter would send the former a good and complete copy of the video. Fayette County acknowledged that it was an open record under Georgia law. Stamford asserted that it was exempt from release under Connecticut law.
* I filed an appeal with the Connecticut Freedom of Information Commission. And the system appears to work — though the scarecrow of a commission hearing did cost me a cross-country plane ticket that now will not be used.
Irv Muchnick