- Description: Secondary/co-lead detective in Hae Min Lee homicide case
- Alt. names or misspellings: Bill, Litz
- Job Title: Homicide Detective
- Employer: Baltimore City Police Department - BPD
- Testimony: Trial 2
Further information:
Bill Ritz became the secondary detective investigating Hae Min Lee’s murder soon after the case began, replacing Gordon Carew, but towards the end of the investigation his name and his handwriting both feature more prominently in the police records then the primary, Greg MacGillivary. He was known as a keen golfer. At the time of the investigation he lived in Phoenix, Baltimore County, 20 miles north of the city, but just a third of a mile from Jenn P’s attorney, James Fowley.
Ritz also worked the case of Ezra Mable, who was exonerated of murder after 10 years, and the case of Sabein Burgess exonerated of murder after nineteen years in prison, where he withheld an interview of another man confessing to the murder, and was the lead detective in the case of Malcolm Jabbar Bryant, also wrongly convicted of murder and exonerated after seventeen years (including many years of appeals for DNA testing (which was fought tooth and nail by the State). In another case, appealled in 2002, judges noted that “Detective Ritz candidly acknowledged that he intentionally withheld the reading of the Miranda warnings during the first 90-minute stage of the interrogation”.
Ritz left the BPD in 2012 “under a cloud”, after being named in Burgess’s lawsuit. He is not named in the BPD alumni website roll of honor for retired officers. (h/t to Tim Dragga, Susan Simpson and Hart2hart616 amongst others)