Francois McKinnon: Welcome to the Miami PI Chronicles podcast. I’m your host Francois McKinnon from McKinnon Investigative Group.
Oscar Santamaria: And I’m Oscar Santamaria of Optimum Investigations. We created this podcast with the goal to educate, inform, and entertain aspiring, beginner, and seasoned professionals in the investigative field. With over 60 years of combined experience, we offer invaluable insights and lessons learned. While we may not have all the answers, our knowledge can certainly benefit anyone interested in this dynamic profession.
Francois McKinnon: So sit back, listen, and enjoy these episodes. Please do not forget to like, share, and follow.
On today’s show we are going to discuss two things. First, contracts and retainer agreements for private investigators, which is one of the most overlooked documents in the industry, particularly among newer PIs who are just excited to get the work started. Oscar, you have several contract templates and we have made them available to listeners who email us at [email protected].
We are also going to discuss the case of the Lady in the Suitcase. This is a murder mystery case that a colleague of mine, investigator Ken Brennan, solved years ago. It is a case that has always fascinated me and I want to share the details with our audience.
Oscar Santamaria: Let us start with contracts. They should never be overlooked. A contract is designed to protect you and your client. Never let the important terms of an assignment be left to word of mouth. You need to cover hours, pricing, whether you charge mileage or not, whether travel time is included, whether a report is automatically generated or is an extra cost, when payment is due, and how payment is to be made.
You also need to address the realities of insurance defense surveillance specifically. There are no guarantees in this business. A subject can be inactive. They can be lost during a mobile surveillance. They could have moved. You could get burned, meaning the subject realises they are being watched. When you are working with a private client on a domestic case or a child custody matter, these clients do not understand how surveillance works. You have to educate them upfront so they are not shocked when things do not go perfectly.
Francois McKinnon: That is something a lot of people do not understand. If you have followed a subject for seven hours at $100 an hour, that is $700 of the client’s money spent. If the subject was not active and you have limited video to show for it, some clients will simply refuse to pay. Without a contract you have no recourse.
Oscar Santamaria: Exactly. And you also need to include court appearances in your contract. If there are depositions or court proceedings you need to be compensated for that time. My rate for court testimony is $125 an hour with a four-hour minimum, then $125 for each additional hour. Some investigators simply block out a full day at their hourly rate. Whatever you decide, spell it out in the contract.
I also have a clause covering traffic violations. If I run a red light chasing a subject or have to park quickly in a metered space during a surveillance, the client is liable for any resulting tickets as long as I can prove the timing falls within the assignment period.
One very important point about format: keep the contract to one page. I have seen contracts that read like a legal novel. That is the wrong approach. You want your client to sign something they actually read and understand. One page, clear language, all the key points covered. A, B, C, D, E. Sign here. That is it. If they have never used a private investigator before, a 13-page document is going to overwhelm them and damage the relationship before the work even begins.
Francois McKinnon: I learned that lesson the hard way. An attorney friend created a contract for me that was 13 pages long. It read like closing on a house. It was full of repetitive legal language and I do not think a single client ever read the whole thing.
Oscar Santamaria: Always get a retainer upfront. Do not try to be generous and assume the client will pay after the work is done. People who are completely reasonable before you start a surveillance can become very difficult when they have to pay for eight hours of work where the subject never left the house. It happens and it is not your fault, but you need to be protected before that conversation ever happens.
You should also have a separate contract for subcontractors. When you bring in outside help you need to cover: when payment is expected, how much they are being paid, whether you pay travel time, what the turnaround time is for submitting reports and video after a case is completed, how they will receive payment, and the fact that as subcontractors they are responsible for their own taxes. You also need to address what happens if they are called for a court testimony or deposition on a case they worked.
Before you even get into the contract discussion with a potential subcontractor, always request a sample report first. A resume tells you what someone claims to know. A sample report tells you how they actually work. You can see immediately whether they know the industry terminology, how they structure their activity logs, how they embed and caption photographs, and whether their attention to detail meets your standard. If they do not have a sample report, that alone tells you something. You can eliminate a lot of unsuitable candidates quickly this way.
This also ties back to what we discussed in the last episode about reaching out to PI agencies for work. When you send that email, attach a sample report. You will move to the top of the list immediately. A well-written sample report communicates more about your professionalism than anything else you could include.
Oscar Santamaria: And now Francois, tell us about the Lady in the Suitcase case.
Francois McKinnon: This case has fascinated me for years. I know the investigator who solved it personally, Ken Brennan, and he is one of the most focused and relentless investigators I have ever met. He works cold cases primarily now and I would say he is among the top cold case investigators in the country.
The case goes back to 2005. A 21-year-old woman from Ukraine was working as a crew member on a cruise ship and was staying at a hotel near the Miami airport. She was found the next morning near the edge of the Everglades, naked and barely alive. She had been beaten severely, assaulted, and left for dead. An FP&L utility worker found her. She was airlifted to Jackson Memorial Hospital in critical condition.
She survived. She eventually retained an attorney to pursue a claim against the hotel for a failure to secure the property. That is how Ken Brennan got involved. He was brought in to investigate what had happened.
The Miami PD had reviewed the hotel security footage and concluded that the victim had not been taken out of the hotel, meaning she must have left voluntarily at some point. Ken looked at the same footage and something did not add up. He went back to the hotel director of security and they discovered that the camera system timestamps were off by 17 minutes. That single discrepancy changed everything.
Once the timestamps were corrected, the footage showed the victim entering an elevator with a large man in the early hours of the morning. He gestured her into the elevator. They went up together. With the corrected timeline it became clear that this man had gone to her floor, not she to his.
Then at 5.28 in the morning, the same man appears on camera near the hotel exit pushing a large suitcase. He is a big man, well over 280 pounds, and the suitcase required both hands and real effort to maneuver over the threshold of the elevator. He left the hotel with it. At 6.21 the same man is back on camera returning to the hotel without the suitcase.
The drive from that hotel to the edge of the Everglades is about 20 minutes. The timing fit exactly.
Ken then did something methodical and brilliant. He went to a gym owned by a friend of his where he knew the dimensions and weight of the victim. He purchased a suitcase of the exact same make and size as the one on the footage. He set up a camera exactly the way the hotel system was positioned and filmed a woman of similar build getting into the suitcase and being zipped up. It worked without any difficulty. That video became part of the evidentiary reconstruction of the case.
He also used a measuring tape at the actual elevator to determine the precise height of the threshold and the suitcase dimensions from the footage. That level of physical reconstruction is what separates a good investigator from a great one.
The DNA evidence eventually confirmed the suspect’s involvement. Once his profile was entered into the national database it connected him to multiple assaults on women in other cities across the country. This man was a serial offender. Instead of a much lighter sentence he ended up with over 20 years, and that is largely because Ken Brennan refused to accept the initial conclusion that nothing had happened inside that hotel.
There is one more detail I love about this case. The suspect was seen on camera wearing a T-shirt with the Mercury logo on it, a promotional shirt for a new outboard engine model that had just been introduced at the Miami Boat Show. Ken tracked that shirt to Mercury directly. The executives told him the shirts had been given to food court employees at the show and they had just handed them out freely on the last day. That link placed the suspect at the Miami Boat Show, working in the food court, staying at the same hotel as the victim.
The lesson from this case is the same one that applies to every investigation we do, whether it is a two-hour surveillance or a years-long cold case: attention to detail, not giving up, and being willing to physically test your assumptions rather than just theorising about them. Ken Brennan is a remarkable investigator and this case is a perfect example of what this profession is capable of at its best.
Oscar Santamaria: That case really made an impression on me when I first watched it on television. The way the whole thing unraveled, the timestamp, the suitcase reconstruction, the T-shirt. It was like watching a work of art. Hats off to Ken Brennan.
Francois McKinnon: Absolutely. We will wrap it up there for today. Thank you everyone for listening and we look forward to seeing you on the next show. For all of your investigative needs in Florida please contact McKinnon Investigative Group at 954-513-7414 or visit miginvestigations.com. Please remember to share, follow, and like.
This episode is sponsored by the Law Offices of Richard E. Basha and Associates, specialising in all aspects of commercial, civil, business law, and litigation. Located at 401 East Las Olas Boulevard, Suite 1400, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33301. For a free consultation call 954-523-4882. For all your investigative needs call McKinnon Investigative Group at 954-513-7414 or email [email protected].
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