It was a stunning fall for the once-beloved police department veteran, who retired as its senior officer in 2014 after 44 years on the job.
SPRINGFIELD — Kevin Burnham, a decorated and now retired Springfield police detective, pleaded not guilty in Hampden Superior Court on Monday to several charges relating to nearly $400,000 missing from the Springfield Police Department's evidence room.
It was a stunning fall for the once-beloved police department veteran, who retired as its senior officer in 2014 after 43 years on the job. At the time, he passed along badge No. 1 along with his longtime responsibilities in the evidence room, over which many officers said he virtually lorded for decades.
The first signs of trouble - at least publicly - came several months after Burnham's retirement party at police headquarters, where several of his colleagues lauded him as a "great guy" with an infectious laugh. The specific charges leveled against Burnham included six counts of larceny over $250 and one count of larceny under $250, with alleged thefts totaling more than $300,000. Attorney General Maura Healey's office alleges Burnham stole from the evidence room between Dec. 4, 2009 and July 25, 2014- the date of his retirement party.
According to Healey's office, in some instances, Burnham allegedly "shorted" the cash count by taking money when he recounted it. Burnham also allegedly replaced money he stole from various evidence envelopes with previously seized counterfeit money or with newer money that was put into circulation after the original seizure date. The investigation also uncovered more than 160 empty evidence envelopes that were missing the cash that was seized.
A chart of missing money which is part of one of the indictments is embedded below, along with the seven indictments.
In this 2004 Republican file photo, then Detective Kevin M. Burnham shows marijuana and more than $360,000 in cash at the Springfield Police headquarters that was confiscated along with five guns in a drug bust.
Defense attorney Charles Dolan said Burnham, his client, turned himself in so a warrant for his arrest was recalled on Monday. The grand jury indictment against Burdham had been impounded since late December.
Burnham was released on own recognizance with conditions that he surrender his passport, not leave the state without permission from the probation department, turn his firearms over to Dolan, and turn his firearms license and FID card over to Police Commissioner John Barbieri.
Burnham had something of a tragic history as he was among slain Officer Kevin Ambrose's closest friends. Ambrose was fatally shot in 2012 while accompanying a woman who called 911 into her apartment so her estranged boyfriend could collect a television. The seemingly benign call went horribly wrong when Shawn Bryan, a corrections officer in New York City, shot the woman, Ambrose, and himself within eight minutes. The woman and her baby survived.
Burnham drove his late friend's squad car to lead the funeral procession that year. He also cited Ambrose's killing as his lowest moment on the job at his retirement party, when colleagues also noted he was eligible for retirement a full 10 years earlier.
Rumors began percolating around missing cash from the evidence room in the months after Burnham's retirement. Police Commissioner John Barbieri conceded to The Republican that the department had launched an internal investigation and intended to hire an outside consultant after an undisclosed amount of cash could not be accounted for. That disclosure came in March; Barbieri said he began a review of the state of the evidence room in the summer of 2014. Burnham's party was in August.
The state Attorney General's office took over the investigation from the law enforcement side while Boston-based Marcum LLP was hired by the city at $225 per hour to comb through thousands of "evidence bundles" linked to the department's 10,000 pending drug cases, according to the terms of the city contract.
The audit dragged on with little to no further information publicly released about the department's prior procedures for logging in and accounting for evidence, or who police suspected was responsible for the missing cash. Burnham's name came up privately and frequently, but many cops were initially inclined to defend him as a stalwart fixture in the room where cash, drugs, weapons and physical evidence is stored.
While the audit progressed, more than one defense attorney came forward to recoup money that had been seized during arrests or raids, after their clients' cases had been dismissed or otherwise resolved. Criminal defense lawyer Vincent Bongiorni said he made repeated requests for the return of $21,000 on behalf of two clients last year.
Indictment against Kevin Burnham by Patrick Johnson
"The Defendant has made repeated requests upon the Springfield Police Department for the return of his currency and has been told they have been unable to locate it; the Defendant has now been deprived of his property for almost two years," a motion Bongiorni filed with the court read.
In both his clients' cases, the city Law Department issued checks despite the missing status of the cash.
"They did the intelligent thing and paid the money," Bongiorni said during an interview at the time.
The city offered no explanation to Bongiorni as to where the money might be, however. When asked if he had been unable to recover money seized as evidence on behalf of his clients in recent memory, Bongiorni, who has practiced criminal defense law for decades, responded:
"This has never happened to me."
In response to one of several public records request filed by The Republican, city attorneys in late October reported that they had to pay out more than $50,000 to criminal defendants or their attorneys to cover cash that had been reported missing from the evidence room.
The city reported that 11 defendants whose cases had been disposed of were paid back money that was seized during police raids or arrests. The payouts ranged from $119 to more than $25,000 to a single defendant.
Of the 11 defendants on the list provided by the city, Springfield attorney Joe A. Smith III represented one whose drug possession case was dismissed and was owed $800. The money had been seized during the man's arrest. Smith said it took police months to return the money after he placed more than a dozen calls to the department. In addition, they never disclosed his client's cash was among the missing.
"They would tell me the property officers were never there ... They would tell me they had new policies," Smith said. "They never told me they couldn't find it. I couldn't figure out what the hold-up was."
In at least one other drug case that went to trial, a Springfield police officer was forced to take the witness stand and testify that a small amount of cash slated as evidence in the case also had disappeared.
Officer Mark Templeman in June told jurors in Hampden Superior Court he went to sign out the $650 in cash seized from defendant Anthony Rosa, and was told it was "unaccounted for."
"Is that a synonym for missing?" asked Daniel D. Kelly, Rosa's lawyer. "You could interpret it as that," Templeman responded.
Those developments conflicted with Barbieri's initial announcement last March, which characterized all the missing cash as strictly related to "closed cases."
In the most recent update provided by the city on the status of the Marcum audit, city lawyers said in late October that Marcum requested more time and money to continue their audit of the main evidence room and an overflow area containing evidence dating back to 2007.
The city agreed to increase the cap to $170,000 and extend the deadline from Aug. 31 to Nov. 30. The Republican has a request pending with the City Solicitor for an update on the audit and the report on findings pledged by Marcum.
Staff Writer Buffy Spencer contributed to this report, which will be updated.