Parker was happy to have his young friend working with him, even though Madrid had no experience as an investigator. And since Alabama has no licensing requirements for private investigators, all Madrid had to do was declare himself one and go to work.
Parker and Madrid served legal papers, conducted surveillance in divorce cases and performed crime scene investigations for defense attorneys. Sometimes Madrid read and interpreted medical records for trial lawyers.
Robert Madrid said he had a medical degree from Harvard and belonged to Mensa.
(Steve Gates For The Washington Post)
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Normal gumshoe fees were about $55 an hour. Madrid, however, with his academic and medical credentials, could charge as much as $175 an hour, if his testimony was based on the medical expertise he claimed on his résumé.
Parker never questioned Madrid's medical credentials. When they met 20 years earlier on the golf course, mutual friends addressed Madrid as "Doc." Parker never inquired about the details.
Anniston attorney Susan Frost recalls running into Madrid on the street one day in the sweltering summer of 2003. After listening to her complain about her allergies, Madrid showed up at her office with a black doctor's bag, pulled out a stethoscope and listened to her lungs and heart. He gave her some medication that looked like doctor's samples.
Only trouble was, he wasn't a medical doctor. She laughs now at the memory of Parker touting his partner as "the only licensed forensic physician in the state."
Prosecutors weren't laughing, though, when they discovered that wasn't the only credential Madrid had lied about.
Questions about Madrid's background might not have been raised had he not been hired to testify in a murder case earlier this year in Heflin, Ala., just east of Anniston. Defense attorneys hoped Madrid's expert testimony would help convince the jury that their client was not guilty of murdering his neighbor.
Four days before the trial was to begin, however, Assistant District Attorney Brian McVeigh read a report from Madrid that was to be the basis of his expert testimony. It did not ring true, McVeigh says. According to that report, Madrid's testimony on the bullet wound that killed the victim would also discuss the ejection of the spent shell casing from the gun, a subject that would have gone beyond his area of expertise, McVeigh said.
McVeigh glanced at Madrid's glittering curriculum vitae. Then he raised questions about Madrid with the defense attorneys who hired him. The attorneys told Madrid there were concerns about his background.
Suddenly, Madrid changed his mind and said he did not want to testify in the Heflin trial.
McVeigh, however, filed a subpoena to force Madrid into court and called him to the stand. Then the questions started flying.
"Included in [your] CV . . . are some specific mentions of schools that you claim you have attended," the prosecutor said. "Did you, in fact, attend the University of Maryland?"
Madrid responded, "On the advice of counsel, I plead the Fifth Amendment."
