Custodian records a moment in crime
Kathy Armstrong preserves 911 calls for police, attorneys and residents
Kathy Armstrong records case information on a cassette tape. She uses the smaller recorder to capture her voice, then the larger one attached to her computer, background, to record the call.
Story and photo by Dave Schafer
The recording starts with an undulating, deliberate voice.
“The state of Texas vs.” defendant’s name. “Cause number 135782.”
Click. Then a choppy mechanical voice, “Sunday, Dec. 18, 2005, 2200 hours and 47 seconds.”
A phone rings once and is answered by a level-voiced woman.
“Houston 911. Do you need the police or ambulance?”
“Police.” The voice is muffled, as though the caller is speaking low and her hand is cupped around the mouthpiece.
“Just one second. I’m transferring you to the police.”
Another ring. Then, “Go ahead ma’am, you’re on with the Houston police.”
Garbled noise.
“Hello?”
“Yes.” It’s mumbled but audible.
“What’s going on, ma’am?”
“Yes, somebody just broke into my house.” The mumbled voice gives her address. “I can hear them. They’re still here.” Her next words are lost in a rush of panic.
There’s noise in the background. “What’s your name, ma’am?”
Regaining some composure, the caller gives her name and spells it.
“Do you have a description of the suspects?”
“No, I don’t see them.”
“Are they coming through the front or the back?”
“Umm, the back door. It’s the blue house on the corner. I can hear them.” Panic is creeping back into her voice.
Loud sounds in the background.
“OK, we’ll get someone out there.”
“Thank you,” the caller says.
Click.
Audio snapshot
The voice that identified the case belongs to Kathy Armstrong, 911 custodian of records. Every workday, she listens to about 10 such calls, not all as serious, some more so.
The calls are stored in a computer software program for 180 days. Armstrong records the calls to audiocassettes when a request is made.
Most days are spent sitting in a curvy, high-backed seat in a 9-foot by 9-foot, beige-walled office listening to phone calls, her long, pink-coated fingernails typing on the keyboard as she fills in forms. She records the calls for police, the district attorney’s office and citizens.
“We capture a moment in time,” Armstrong said. Usually, that moment tells the story of a crime or an emergency.
In her 20 years with 911, the last seven as custodian of records, Armstrong’s heard funny things, creepy things, and sad things. As she records the calls, she does detective work, like Angela Lansbury in “Murder, She Wrote.” It keeps the job fun.
A woman who requested an ambulance for her husband who had had a heart attack was inconsistent when she described what happened, Armstrong said. Plus, she seemed too calm.
Armstrong knows the sound of distress. Distress was in the voice of the officer who reported her partner had been shot. It was in the voice of the man giving CPR to a boy he’d accidentally hit with a car. It was in the voice of the man who called for help after he’d beaten his stepson with a coat hanger. She heard the child gurgle as he struggled for his last breaths.
She’s heard distress hundreds of times.
“I’m sympathetic to it, but it doesn’t affect me,” she said. “It can get to you sometimes, but you just have to remember that this is your job.”
Some calls, however, affect her personally. While a telecommunicator, she answered her mother’s call when Armstrong’s only sibling died.
“I just freaked out,” she said.
She was at her sister’s house before she thought to call an ambulance. Someone else had called by then.
There are calls of victory, too, like when a woman locked in her trunk by carjackers called for help on her cell phone. The dispatcher talked to her while the police located her.
Catching the bad guys
“We help catch the bad guys,” she said. “My information has to be correct, because a conviction may be based on it.”
Tapes for local law enforcement agencies are free; citizens pay $1 per tape and 10 cents per form page.
Occasionally, Armstrong testifies to tape authenticity in a trial.
She’s testified at some of the most sensational local trials, including Andrea Yates’. She’s had requests for tapes from the Oprah Winfrey Show and Inside Edition.
As for that moment of the house intrusion, the D.A.’s office requested the tape to help build its case against an intruder. Her paperwork done and the call recorded, Armstrong sealed the envelope with the prosecutor’s name written on it.
Then she moved on to the next call. After all, life is a series of moments.
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