Rocky River SRO | "Almost an Adult" | The Case BCI Never Worked- Episode 4

[00:00:00]The Snapchat account was called Bernie.

[00:00:02]That is now what Michael Burnernhard told BUCI investigators when they asked him about his Snapchat username in connection with the second victim. He told him Poncho 6514. Now Poncho 6514 is a real account, or at least it was. It's the username his second ex-wife confirmed for investigators. It's derived from his motorcycle cop nickname and his patrol car number. He has that username or did. It exists. But the account he used with the second victim documented in the search mark return was called Bernie, a different account, one hit not mentioned when asked. When I trained at Reed, and Reed is the interrogation school that most American law enforcement attend, the instructors made a point that stuck with me. People who have done something serious usually don't invent a false day. They give you the real one. the real timeline, the real locations, the real conversation, everything except the part that convicts them. They just skip the part of what they shouldn't have done. You don't have to remember a story you didn't make up.

[00:01:04]He gave BCI investigators the wrong Snapchat username. But in a case that hinges on what was communicated and how and to whom and when, that detail is not nothing. This is episode 4, you're almost an adult. Cut intro.

[00:01:20]>> [music] [music] >> In this episode, I'm going to walk you through the second victim's case, case number 2023-2700.

[00:01:42]I want to start by being precise about what I know and what I don't because precision matters here more than anywhere else in this series. What I know, a second victim came forward independently in October of 2023 after seeing news coverage of Burnernhard's administrative leave. She had been a student at Rocky River High School and Michael Burnernhard was the SRO during her time there. The BCI investigation file documents a pattern of conduct between them that overlaps with her senior year. Michael Baloney, who is the special prosecutor assigned by Rocky River, reviewed her case before BCI became involved and concluded there were insufficient grounds for criminal charges. BCI's chief legal counsel then directed investigators not to pursue the second victim's case independently, citing Maloney's prior determination. I will say that again. A special prosecutor's charging decision made before the state's investigative bureau was involved became the reason the state's investigative bureau did not investigate. What I don't know, what I cannot know because no one who was part of those decisions will explain them is why. Why the investigation of the more recent conduct was closed before BCI could work it independently. whether the applicable law was correctly analyzed, whether anyone in that decision chain considered OC section 2907.03A7.

[00:03:03]I keep repeating it. The statue that makes an SRO sexual conduct with an enrolled student sexual battery regardless of age. I asked BCI directly.

[00:03:13]They gave me three sentences. I asked Kyogre County Prosecutor's Office. They didn't respond. I asked Maloney. He didn't respond. So, let me tell you what the file shows and let you decide what you think about the outcome. In August of 2023, Michael Burnernhard was placed on administrative leave pending an investigation. Local news covered it.

[00:03:33]His name became public. In October of 2023, approximately 2 months later, a young woman contacted BCI. She had seen the coverage. She recognized what had happened to her. She came forward on her own. The phone call opened case number 2023-2700.

[00:03:50]The woman who came forward was a graduating senior at Rocky River High School in 2023. Michael Burnernhard was her SRO during her senior year. The BCI case notes document the nature of the investigation that was opened. And here's the first thing that matters about the Maloney investigation of this case. Maloney had already been brought in. He had already concluded that the conduct involving the first victim didn't rise to criminality. By the time the second victim came forward, Maloney had already rendered a determination in the related case. He reviewed the second victim's case as well, and he reached the same conclusion. Insufficient grounds for criminal charges. The second victim communicated with Burnhard primarily through Snapchat. The warrant return documents this. The account he used with her was called Bernie. When BCI investigators asked Burnhard about his Snapchat username, here is the exchange.

[00:04:41]>> What um do you have a username? Ah, I'll have to look.

[00:04:51]>> Is that something in our age group that people still use? Cuz I don't I don't use it.

[00:04:55]>> I don't use it either. I don't >> I mean I'm friends with like more of the flight attendants have it now, but my my I send back pictures to my daughter every day. That's what I have it for.

[00:05:06]>> Oh, you really?

[00:05:07]>> Yeah.

[00:05:07]>> That's cool.

[00:05:08]>> Uh just get a snap. No, I was just trying to >> Did you just get one while we were >> uh punch 6514? P O N C6514.

[00:05:21]>> What's that have to do with the motorcycle thing?

[00:05:22]>> Of course. Of course.

[00:05:24]>> That's a punch, right?

[00:05:25]>> That's chips.

[00:05:26]>> That's ponchello. Is that what that is?

[00:05:28]Okay.

[00:05:28]>> I got a picture of him at the Cleveland Zoo.

[00:05:30]>> He gave them punch 6514. That account exists, or at least it did. His second wife confirmed it for investigators. She even found it on her phone during the interview. But the account documented in the warrant return for the second victim is Bernie, not Punch 6514. So, a second account, one he did not volunteer. And here's where it gets more specific.

[00:05:54]Later in that same interview, when investigators push him on the second victim, he acknowledges something. Cut audio.

[00:06:00]>> Well, she asked me to do that because she was afraid that my then wife Karen would see that and become concerned.

[00:06:06]>> Okay.

[00:06:08]All right. Did you?

[00:06:10]>> She asked him to add and delete her from his Snapchat to avoid detection. He complied. He was managing the digital trail of a relationship with an enrolled student on her behalf and apparently doing it from an account he didn't initially tell BCI about. He gives the wrong username, acknowledges managing the account to avoid his wife finding out, and then in the same interview, he describes the second victim's case this way. Kagro.

[00:06:37]>> She was a senior, graduating senior, and um she and I were romantically linked.

[00:06:47]>> What does that mean?

[00:06:48]>> Her senior year. Um we would hang out sometimes um outside of the school day.

[00:06:59]Never. It was not a sexual relationship, but we uh got close. Okay. I know her knew her family cuz her dad was the hockey coach and was knew the kids when they were younger and stuff and we just got very close that last year, last senior year.

[00:07:13]>> Okay.

[00:07:14]>> In high school.

[00:07:15]>> Romantically linked. He uses that phrase not, hey, I made a grave mistake. Not I know this is wrong. Romantically linked as though describing a relationship between two adults. She was an enrolled student at the school where he was the SRO. And under Ohio law, it does not matter whether anything sexual occurred.

[00:07:36]The dynamic itself, an SRO being romantically linked with a student he is paid by the city to protect is the violation. The statue exists precisely for this. The Maloney investigation of the second victim documented specific conduct. His report, portions of which are in the BCI file, described meetings in the metrop parks, photographs of a sexual nature exchange between them, kissing, contact on prom night, and after Maloney concluded his investigation, Burnhard approached the second victim in person at Cracker Park in Wesley, despite having been warned not to contact her. I want to tell you something about the woman who reported this to the school district. The woman who initially brought it to the superintendent's attention, who in the BCI file is described as the reporting party, drove to Michael Balon's law office with a written statement. She was turned away by the secretary. Her statement was never taken. I covered this in episode 3 in the context of the first victim, but the reporting party's experience is directly relevant here, too, because she was trying to put information into the Maloney investigation that never made it into the file. But somehow Maloney concluded insufficient grounds for criminal charges. I asked him why. He didn't respond. On January 10th, 2024, after six search warrants had already been executed in the first victim's case, BCI Chief Legal Counsel Zad Zaduki told special agent Heather Carl not to pursue the second victim's case independently.

[00:09:08]His rationale, as documented in the BCI internal case notes, Maloney had already rendered a legal determination, there was no basis for BCI to reinvestigate a matter where a legal conclusion had already been reached. That directive is in the BCI matter notes for case 2023-2700.

[00:09:27]I have those notes. I asked BCI a specific question about this. In light of OC section 2907.03A7, the statute that makes sexual conduct between a school authority figure and an enrolled student sexual battery regardless of age. Was the Suduki directive appropriate? BCI's response was three sentences about charging decisions resting with the Cyode County Prosecutor's Office. That is not an answer to the question I asked. The question I asked was whether BCI's own legal council correctly assessed the legal landscape when he told investigators to stand down on a case involving an SRO and an enrolled student based on a prior determination by a city retained special prosecutor. The answer to the question matters because if Maloney's determination was based on an analysis that did not account for OC 2907.03A7 and I have no evidence one way or the other because no one will say then the Suduki directive deferred to a legally incomplete conclusion and a second victim's case was closed before BCI ever worked it. I cannot tell you definitively what happened. What I can tell you is that no one who is in the decision chain will ever explain it on the record. The phrase that gives this episode its title comes from the BCI record of communications between Burnernhard and the second victim. In their recorded conversations reviewed by BCI investigators, Burnernhard told the second victim in substance that she was almost an adult, that she was nearly 18.

[00:11:00]The argument was implicit proximity to adulthood as a justification for what was happening. Again, beating the dead horse under OC section 290703A7.

[00:11:10]That argument is not just morally bankrupt is legally irrelevant. The statute does not say unless she's almost 18. It says the conduct is sexual battery when the offender is a person in authority in a school and the victim is an enrolled student. Period. He knew what the law said. He was trained as a law enforcement officer. He had been a member of IAK, an organization whose entire purpose is the identification and prosecution of adults who exploit the apparent consent of minors. He had been through Opana training that explicitly covered the grooming process and why children become victims. And he told an enrolled student she was almost an adult. I want to go back to Burnhart's first ex-wife interview for a moment because she says something that I think has gotten lost in the noise of this story. It said something about something about if we get caught or I don't even remember. It was something stupid about like one for you or one for me and at least our breath will smell good if we get something stupid. I remember I kept I kept that.

[00:12:19]>> She kept it for years and eventually she had to let it go. There is a detail in Burnhart's first ex-wife's BCI interview that connects directly to something in the Cellbrite analysis. I mentioned this in episode 1. In January of 2024, one week before the six search warrants were executed, Burnernhard's Google account shows a login from the Westlake Public Library. His last Google login before the warrants hit. Burnernhard's first wife tells BCI investigators that for a period after he went on administrative leave, she had his location tracked through his daughter's phone and he kept going to the Westlake Library for hours, multiple times a week. Cut audio. there for a while.

[00:13:03]I don't know why he was going to the Westlake library and I'm talking for hours like like Tim and I actually tried to do like a steak out like at first drove >> through >> like we drove through there cuz I'm like >> this is recently or >> this was this >> this is before we got hired at Frontier cuz I was like I was trying to rack my brain. I'm like why? And I could go back. I don't delete any text messages, by the way. I have every text message since I met him. So I could go back and find he would send me the locate like send me dad's here, dad's there.

[00:13:44]>> His first ex-wife and her current husband drove through the Westlake Library parking lot to see what he was doing there. She tells her prosecutor contact about it. He suggests she reach out to Wesley, which she doesn't do because she feels like she has nothing concrete. She speculates he was communicating with the second victim through the library's public computers off device untraceable. The BCI Celebrate analysis places his last Google login at the Westlake Library one week before the warrants. She has been tracking him going there repeatedly for months now. I cannot tell you definitively what he was doing at the Westlake Public Library, but I can tell you that two independent data points, the Celebrate analysis and his first ex-wife's location tracking, both place him there during the investigation period. There's one more detail from the first victim's best friend's BCI interview that belongs in this episode.

[00:14:35]It connects the first victim to the second victim and Burnhard in a way that tells you something about who he is.

[00:14:41]After the first victim left for the army, after Burnhard had made and broken every promise he made to her, she stayed in contact with him intermittently. He would message her on Facebook. He would tell her he missed her, she had moved on, married, built a life with someone who actually deserved her. And then in 2009, an ex-boyfriend's posted intimate photographs of the first victim's best friend online without consent. And this was years before revenge porn laws existed. The first victim's best friend needed someone to help get them taken down. The first victim called in a favor to burn her. Kario.

[00:15:15]>> Um, but the only other interaction I had with him as an adult is as a favor and because of what he did, like she called in this favor when I was when I got out of the army in like 2009.

[00:15:30]my ex-boyfriend like put a bunch of intimate photos of me online and then she called in a favor for him to like help remove those and like get that like handled. And that's the only other time that I've ever seen him in my in my life aside from high school time. And even then, like I wasn't super cordial to him. Like he helped me. I still don't like him, but he helped me with it. Um >> why did he help? The first victim's best friend says it herself. Had he not known her like that in high school, I don't think he would have helped me because of the guilt that he felt. The guilt. He helped remove revenge porn photographs from the internet using whatever connections or leverage he had as a law enforcement officer because he had felt guilty about what he had done to her best friend. Guilt is an implicit admission. He knew what he was doing was wrong. he had known for years. And he demonstrated that knowledge by spending capital, his leverage, his connections, his goodwill to help the best friend of the person he had victimized. Because of that guilt, that guilt did not, however, stop him. It did not prompt him to come forward. It did not stop him from pursuing the second victim years later, but it was there. I want to end this episode with something brief, but significant. Burnernhard's first wife describes telling Burnhard's mother when the news of the recent case broke.

[00:16:47]Mike's mother. Um, when this came out on the news and I called her, she made like a comment like, "What's Mike doing? Run around with the young girls again?" Or, "What's Mike?" Like, she made some comment to me. His mother's first response when Burnernheart's first ex-wife told her what the news was reporting was to use the word again. Not I can't believe this. Not. That's impossible. Not. There must be some mistake. What's Mike doing?

[00:17:32]He's running around with the young girls again. His own mother in Florida when she heard the news reached for again before anything else. I don't know what Burnhart's mother knew. I don't know what prompted that word. I'm not going to speculate about it, but I'm going to note that it's in the record because it belongs there. So, wrapping up, the second victim's case was closed before BCI could work it independently. A special prosecutor found insufficient grounds for charges. BCI's own legal counsel deferred to the finding. The investigation of the more recent conduct ended before it even began. And Michael Burnernhard in his BCI interview described his relationship with the student as being romantically linked. He gave investigators the wrong Snapchat username. He acknowledged managing the digital trail to avoid his wife finding out. And he said she was almost an adult. Almost. Not almost a victim, almost someone entitled to the protection of the law. Almost an adult.

[00:18:28]As though that changes the statute. He knew the law. He worked in law enforcement for 29 years. He had been specifically trained to identify adults who used authority and access to exploit young people. and he used the phrase almost an adult to describe his relationship with an enrolled student whose safety he was paid to protect. In episode five, I'm going to tell you about what happened after the indictment, including a phone call that came in to BCI the day the press release went out and including the people who showed up at sentencing to support him and who they were. I'm Scott Garder.

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