The boy suspected of killing Archie Klatos has been posthumously cleared, Chagrin Officers report.
Police Sketch from 2015.
Information is not knowledge; information, combined with all additional context and perspectives, is knowledge.
It was announced this morning that Thomas Michaels, believed until recently to have been the killer of his still missing classmate Archie Klatos, has been officially removed from the official file on the boy's investigation. The Chagrin PD are no longer actively pursuing research in regards to Michaels as a lead, because at this point he is no longer a suspect.
"We knew he was connected to Klatos; what we filled in was how," states officer Norman Hawthorn, the official director of archives at the Chagrin PD. "We've seen the disastrous consequences of that mistake."
“We knew he was connected to Klatos; what we filled in was how.”
He took the opportunity to relay an old lesson the incident reminded him of: "When I was still in the academy, an old mentor of mine told me a story, far better than I can probably. He called it 'the shattered window' scenario."
"He'd tell his students 'say a window is shattered in a living room; you know only two things, that it's shattered and that the glass is inside. So you know something from outside had to shatter it.'"
"Then he'd say, 'so there are three ways this could have happened; a baseball bat could have swung at it, causing the glass to shatter inward. A crowbar could have struck it head-on, causing it to shatter inward once it was pulled from the glass. A bullet could have fired through it, once again causing it to shatter inward.'"
"He'd then say 'the point is, no matter what happens the evidence is not wrong. Only the conclusion can be wrong.'"
"He'd always expand on that, too, yes. I remember, he'd say 'you may say it's a bullet, go after the nearest person who has bullets, then arrest the wrong man. The evidence suggests it's possible. The only evidence you have is a broken window and glass inwards. That leaves room for multiple conclusions.'"
"'But THEN,' he'd say, 'let's say some time passes and you find no projectiles inside. Now you have MORE evidence, which means you have less conclusions. That doesn't mean your original line of thinking was wrong; the evidence didn't change just because the conclusion did.'"
"'Because that's the thing,' he'd arrive at this point, 'that's the thing: conclusions are based on evidence, evidence is not based on conclusions. So as more evidence arrives, less conclusions must be accepted.'"
Has our conclusion been at fault?
We knew a boy went missing. We knew his classmate had a gun. We knew that gun was found in a river the missing boy referenced. This is the information we had.
This left room for MANY conclusions. But were all of them valid?
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