Pubdate: Mon, 08 Sep 2003
Source: Huntsville Times (AL)
Copyright: 2003 The Huntsville Times
Contact:  http://www.htimes.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/730
Author: Kay Campbell

NASHVILLE PRIVATE EYE MAY BE WATCHING YOU

Investigator Uses High Tech Equipment Police Departments Can't Afford

FAYETTEVILLE, Tenn. - By the time the bad guys see Ray Abernathy, it's too 
late.

By that time, the private investigator from Nashville has the tapes or 
pictures or computer record evidence that will lock them up.

Abernathy stopped by Fayetteville Wednesday on his way to a meeting with 
Franklin County investigators. An expert in electronic surveillance, he has 
worked with many rural police departments, including Fayetteville's and 
Pulaski's. But he's also worked with departments as big as Los Angeles', 
with corporations concerned about theft or corporate spying, with 
celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, and with the federal Drug Enforcement 
Administration.

He has equipment and electronic capabilities small departments could never 
afford, for instance, a $60,000 machine to clarify audio tapes with lots of 
background noise, a van loaded with infrared cameras and microphones 
mounted behind the turn signals - microphones sensitive enough, he said, 
"to pick up a bird chirp a block away."

And he has the skill even many large departments lack, and access to spying 
equipment he's invented.

So Abernathy, 52, a private investigator going on 28 years, never bothered 
with the self-defense classes, the boxing lessons that some fictional 
detectives take. A Marine for six years who was assigned prisoner escort 
duties, he knows something about fighting skills, and he sometimes carries 
a pistol, particularly when he's working on drug cases. But those are 
skills he never plans to use.

His goal is to get close without the subject ever knowing he was there.

No privacy left

He can get pretty close.

"A lot of what your see on TV is old technology or hype," Abernathy said. 
"If you could see the new technology, it would scare you to the death. 
You'd wonder if there's any privacy left."

Few people have any privacy left if Abernathy is hired to investigate them, 
he says. And what he's learned means he shreds all of his own personal 
papers and bills before burning them. Otherwise, he says, a person's 
garbage can become the basis of their biography.

"We can start with just a name and end up with a whole history," he said.

And in cases where they have access to someone's computer - say a husband 
wants to see if his wife is writing juicy e-mails to someone other than him 
- - Abernathy and his assistant, Stephanie King, can install a spying 
software on the computer. That software can order the computer to send a 
blind copy of selected e-mails, keyed by target words, to another computer.

"Even people who deal with computers on a regular basis can't find it," 
Abernathy said.

"It's totally invisible," King said, joining Abernathy in the van he uses 
for surveillance.

 From the outside, it's just another slightly battered work van; inside 
it's equipped with switches and toggles, cameras and tapes.

A camera hidden in a small roof mount can pan around the van and zoom in. 
One-way glass panels can accommodate infrared cameras for night-time taping.

The van itself can change its appearance at night - switches allow 
Abernathy to kill one headlight, say, or change out the running lights so 
that a person glancing in a rear-view mirror wouldn't think the same 
vehicle was still behind.

Most of the time these days, Abernathy's work is the technical sort: wiring 
a room where the drug sale will take place, walking through a crowded bar 
with a camera hidden in his ball cap to catch a convicted felon violating 
probation, or doing computer searches. He outwits the bad guys.

Abernathy's work brings praise from local officers who have worked with him.

"I would love for us to have some of this equipment, it's amazing," said 
Capt. Joyce McConnell, investigator for the Lincoln County Sheriff's 
Department. "Ray's brilliant."

"He's got high tech equipment and stuff - things you see in a lot of these 
spy movies," said Franklin County Mike Foster, speaking from his office 
Friday morning. "We can't afford them, so we use Ray for his equipment and 
his expertise."

'Dumber than rock salt'

Little of the work he does these days, he says, is scary. Even when he 
helps to catch scary people, many times the evidence he gives to 
prosecutors is so convincing that the accused will agree to a plea bargain 
and skip the trial altogether, missing a chance to catch a glimpse of the 
average-looking fellow with sandy-colored hair who put together much of the 
case's evidence.

And that's fine with Abernathy, who still remembers the terror of one of 
the biggest cases he's worked: busting two leaders of a Colombian drug 
cartel with a load of cocaine worth over $200 million on the streets.

Abernathy, who is a pilot, was introduced as the fellow who could fly the 
specially modified plane the drug runners wanted. The plane, made for 10 
passengers, had been emptied and a large gas tank installed along with 
booster rockets on the wings, making it possible to take the plane into the 
air after only 500 feet of runway.

"I acted dumber than rock salt," Abernathy said. "I was just a pilot 
willing to do it for the money."

For the money, Abernathy had also equipped the plane with a tracking 
device. A U.S. customs official in Colombia somehow got wind of the 
operation and tipped the bad guys.

"He like to got a lot of people killed, including me," Abernathy said.

Back home in Nashville, he sent his wife to another state for six months 
until everything settled down and the convictions were completed.

Being sneaky, Abernathy said, isn't something that comes naturally to him.

"I learned to be sneaky because it pays well," he said. He charges $125 a 
hour, with a 24-hour retainer required up front.

Getting the Information

King, 25, says she was sneaky even before she joined Abernathy's company.

"Sneaky is in my nature," she said. "I'm kind of fearless when it comes to 
this stuff."

King, who does some on-the-spot work for Abernathy, didn't want her picture 
taken. Her two sons, 6 and 8, think her work, even though it takes her away 
from home for extended hours sometimes, is very cool.

A few weeks ago, she was able to take them a newspaper report of the trial 
of one of the cases she had investigated with Abernathy.

"My 8-year-old is just learning to read, but he read the whole thing," she 
said. "He only had trouble with a few words like 'allege' and 'convicted.' "

King has worked for Abernathy's Surveillance Equipment Inc. for two years. 
The work, she says, is more interesting than her former job as a researcher 
and paralegal for a Nashville law firm. She loves the computer 
investigation work and also enjoys the times she's carrying the small 
leather purse that conceals a camera capable of shooting high-quality video 
from a lens no bigger than the tip of a pencil.

Abernathy can do just about anything, he said, except work for the bad guys 
or go outside of legal bounds.

"I do it within the law, but I get the information," Abernathy said. "The 
only thing I can't do is to make someone guilty or innocent."
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom