Private investigators work to see justice served

So you’re going through a messy divorce and you want to hire a private eye to dig up the dirt on your spouse to work over your ex in court.

That’s not the kind of case Confidential Investigations, a Hayden private investigation firm, handles.

“If you just want to steamroll them and crush them into the ground like a used toothpick … we don’t do that,” said Phillip Thompson, investigator.

What they do is seek out the truth in the interest of justice, particularly in cases involving children, says Thompson and his business partner and company founder “Erin.” While Thompson is the front man, the guy who puts the public face on the firm, Erin works behind the scenes, often doing undercover work. He prefers that his last name not be used. His business card says simply, “Erin.”

“Endangerment of kids, these are the cases we go after full on,” Erin said. They investigate child custody disputes, track down parents who take their children and run, locate runaways and transport teens to special “tough love” schools.

Confidential Investigations worked one case where a father was concerned that his wife was using drugs. An undercover investigator followed her into a gay bar where she worked and to a party afterwards and videotaped her smoking dope at both places. “That’s not something you want to have around your 2- to 4-year-old,” Erin said.

Thompson tells of another case involving a woman in California with three children. Her ex-husband, who lived in Idaho, owed $53,000 in back child support. He claimed to have no job and no assets. The detectives discovered he had a nice house and car, a boat and a business. They forwarded the information to the woman’s attorney.

“The principal goal in the custody cases is what’s in the best interests of the child. We don’t take cases where we don’t have parents who are ready to reconcile,” Erin said. And while not all cases end with reconciliation, clients have to be open to it, he said.

Besides cases involving children, the firm does background checks for employers and churches, works on criminal defense cases and locates missing persons. They had one case in which 80-year-old parents hadn’t seen their transient son for 25 years. It took three months, but they were able to locate him.

“I still remember telling the mother, ‘I’ve got a phone number, you need to call this right away,’ ” Erin said.

Erin started the firm in 1997, part time at first. He spent six years in the Air Force, in law enforcement. When he got out he started a logging business. It got to be too much work and took too much time away from his family. He started doing some investigative work for attorneys part time. By 1999, he was doing investigations full time.

Thompson got into the business because he needed a private investigator. “There were questions going on about my wife, so I hired Erin,” he said. Thompson owned an executive recruiting business and had worked as an auditor in the Army, jobs requiring investigative techniques

“At one time Erin was working on a financial case. That’s my forte. I helped him on that project. Then there was the tractor repossession (case). Pretty soon I’m working part time for him, and I don’t know it.” Thompson officially joined the firm in May.

Besides Erin and Thompson, there are three others who work for the firm. Erin, besides working in the field, aligns strategy, gives direction and manages cases.

“I run strictly on facts and information,” Erin said.

“I like to hobnob with the Chamber of Commerce. I like people,” Thompson said. “We have the same business philosophy, but we have different tools.”

They are selective about the cases they take on and demand complete honesty from clients. “It’s written into our contract that if they mislead us, provide us with less than full information, we’re done. I’m kind of like a human lie detector. I can spot a liar 100 miles away,” Erin said.

Private investigation involves some tedium and boredom – searching public records, spending hours viewing videotapes or sitting on surveillance. “Pretty soon you know the neighbor’s dog better than your own,” Thompson said.

But the job has its reward in the results: finding that missing person, seeing a teenager turn his life around or having a judge award custody to their client.

The best part? “When justice is served,” Thompson said.