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Finding false sense of security

A mother says Critical Intervention Services could have prevented her daughter's murder.

By CHRIS TISCH
Published January 9, 2006

CLEARWATER - Aimee Farrell wore the uniform of her employer, Critical Intervention Services, as she lay in her casket at her funeral.

Farrell, 20, loved her job as a security officer with CIS and saw it as a stepping-stone to her dream career as a police officer.

But on Dec. 11, 2001, she was brutally raped and murdered in her Clearwater Beach apartment.

After Farrell's death, CIS rallied around her family. Employees drove her mother, Elizabeth, to the funeral in a procession of patrol cars. Company workers wore their uniforms, black bands over their badges. They even retired Aimee's radio call number, Adam 60.

Mrs. Farrell was proud to see her daughter in her uniform at the funeral.

But as Mrs. Farrell learned more about the murder, she became frustrated with the security company that had employed her daughter.

The man arrested in the killing was an acquaintance who arrived at Farrell's apartment complex, 880 Mandalay Apartments, after 4 a.m. He signed in under a fake name. The doorman didn't ask for an ID or call Farrell's apartment to announce the guest.

The doorman worked for CIS.

The last straw came the day Mrs. Farrell emptied the blood-spattered furniture from her daughter's apartment. She said the doorman that day, a different man than the one working the night of Farrell's murder, was goofing off with a girlfriend and not paying any attention to security.

So Mrs. Farrell sued the very company whose uniform had, just months before, made her so proud.

"I'm not the type who likes to file lawsuits," Mrs. Farrell said. "But I thought somebody needed to teach these people a lesson."

* * *

Clearwater-based CIS is best known for providing elaborate security and antiterrorism training and planning for businesses and government.

The company upgraded security plans at TECO Energy Inc. after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. It has trained the Capitol police in Washington, D.C., and other federal government agencies.

It also has provided protection for high-profile politicians and celebrities like Sen. Bob Dole, actor Steven Segal, news anchorwoman Paula Zahn, talk show host Sally Jessy Raphael and Archbishop Desmond Tutu.

The St. Petersburg Times has used CIS for security purposes.

CIS customarily does not provide doorman type security services, but was persuaded to provide the service at 880 Mandalay by the property manager, Trammel Crow Residential Services.

K.C. Poulin, CIS' president and chief executive, said the company hired the building's doormen, most of them retired men.

The building also had a restaurant and shops, Poulin said, so it didn't make sense for doormen to check everyone coming and going. They would call guests when visitors arrived, though that wasn't required in the contract signed by CIS and Trammel Crow.

* * *

Aimee Farrell had wanted to live close to the water.

She and her mother visited 880 Mandalay on Clearwater Beach, where the doorman questioned them. Mrs. Farrell liked that attention was being paid to who visited the complex.

She and her daughter agreed the building's security was an important amenity.

Farrell rented a studio apartment for $650 a month and enrolled at Florida Metropolitan University to study criminal justice.

CIS recruited her in the winter of 2001. She also had worked other jobs to make ends meet, including at two local motels.

At one of those motels, she became friends with co-worker Christen Wadatz. Farrell liked Wadatz's young daughters, but she didn't like her husband, Todd, who she thought was lazy, Mrs. Farrell said.

Farrell had the Wadatz family over to her apartment on July 4, 2001.

Five months later, Wadatz called Aimee and said he had a family emergency, Farrell worried that the children were in danger. She agreed to let him come over.

Still, Farrell was concerned about the visit.

She called her mother, who lived in Dunedin, and asked her to call her every 10 minutes. Mrs. Farrell called just after Wadatz arrived. Farrell told her she was going to get him to leave.

Mrs. Farrell briefly fell asleep, then woke and called 20 minutes later. No answer. She drove to the apartment with Farrell's younger sister. They found Farrell dead.

"You just don't know what it's like to open a door and see a crime scene like that," Mrs. Farrell said. "I felt a swish of evil come out of that place."

* * *

Farrell's phone calls to her mother pointed directly to her killer.

That was a good thing: The doorman couldn't remember the killer's face and a video surveillance unit wasn't working that night.

Police tracked down Wadatz, who admitted to one of the most brutal murders and rapes in Clearwater's recent memory. Farrell was stabbed 33 times. Many of the wounds were to the face and neck. After she fell to the floor, Wadatz raped her.

He washed off in Farrell's shower, then dressed in her red shorts and white tank top. He put his clothes and the knife in a plastic bag.

Wadatz left without the doorman noticing his change of dress. He dumped the bloody clothes and knife near the Belleair Causeway.

After his confession, Clearwater police booked Wadatz on a first-degree murder charge. Prosecutors decided to seek the death penalty.

Mrs. Farrell said she wanted just a little funeral for her daughter, but CIS got involved in the arrangements, moved the service to a bigger room and added an honor guard to the ceremony.

She was grateful.

Then the apartment complex, which has since been sold and converted to condominiums, got pushy about getting her to move her daughter's things out, she said.

Mrs. Farrell said the complex's agents threatened to keep the security deposit because of all the blood. She eventually got the deposit back, but her anger was rising.

As she emptied her daughter's apartment, people walked by and made ghostly noises, she said.

"I'm thinking everybody in this building is in danger. They've just had a killing and it's still happening," she said. "They can throw their fancy funerals, but they can't tighten up their security?"

* * *

A few months later, Wadatz offered to plead guilty and accepted a sentence of life in prison without the chance of parole.

Mrs. Farrell agreed to avoid the stress of a trial.

She has since learned that Wadatz is seeking an appeal, which makes her angry. But she has just as much anger for CIS.

"I blame him, but it's like blaming the devil," she said. "But these people, they just didn't do their job. I blame them as much as I blame him because they failed her that night."

Mrs. Farrell also sued the apartment complex, Trammel Crow Residential Services and the doorman.

Her attorneys, Tom Carey and Jodi Leisure, think all of them shared blame.

"We thought the security was inadequate and was sort of a patchwork quilt," Carey said.

In court papers, defense attorneys suggested Farrell was at fault.

"She was a bright girl who made some mistakes in judgment, that's what it comes down to," Poulin said.

"But what 20-year-old hasn't? The person ultimately to blame is not Aimee. The person to blame is Todd Wadatz."

On Dec. 14, nearly four years to the day after Aimee Farrell's death, the lawsuit was settled. The terms are confidential and the defendants admit no wrongdoing.

Poulin said CIS has changed no policies because of this case. "There wasn't anything to change," he said.

* * *

Joseph Ricci, executive director of the National Association of Security Companies, said it appears lawsuits against security companies have become more frequent in recent years. He said security companies were sued after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

And in Tampa a year before the Farrell settlement, a jury ordered an apartment complex owner and property manager to pay $15.7-million to University of South Florida student Lai Chau, who was kidnapped from her gated community and shot three times in the head and left for dead.

"It's something we're concerned about in the industry," said Ricci. "They just start filing litigation against anything they can and see what sticks and off the table, they'll settle the situation. That happens a lot."

In many cases, he said, people may feel they can let their guard down if they see a security person in their building.

But considering more than 80 percent of victims are attacked by people they know, he said it's important to remember guards can only do so much.

"There's an expectation that you're a little more secure, but you still have to be vigilant," he said.

[Last modified January 9, 2006, 00:56:11]