Speaker 1: This is on the Job, a podcast about finding your
Speaker 1: life's work. On the job, is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Express Employment Professionals. This season, we're bringing you stories of
Speaker 1: folks following their passion to carve their own career path.
Speaker 1: For this episode, we look at a pretty non traditional
Speaker 1: career path, being a private investigator. It's a complicated line
Speaker 1: of work that comes with a lot of assumptions being
Speaker 1: made about it and maybe something a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't feel like they're cut out foreign paper. But sometimes
Speaker 1: doing a job is less about your hard qualifications and
Speaker 1: more about the bigger ideas that drive you. Now that
Speaker 1: you know that we're talking to a real p I today,
Speaker 1: you probably have some idea in your head of what
Speaker 1: that means. So let's get that out of the way. Okay,
Speaker 1: So what do people say to you when they hear
Speaker 1: you're a p I. The first thing is that everyone goes, wow,
Speaker 1: that must be exciting. Well, I've been doing this for
Speaker 1: almost a half a century, and I don't think exciting
Speaker 1: is the word that I would use anymore. Maybe at
Speaker 1: one time, but not anymore. This is Kitty Kitty Haley.
Speaker 1: I am a professional investigator, sometimes called a p I
Speaker 1: or a private investigator, and I am old enough to
Speaker 1: know better. Kitty works and lives in Philadelphia. She's got
Speaker 1: fiery red hair, she's put together, kind of looks like
Speaker 1: she might be a kindergarten teacher. You wouldn't look at
Speaker 1: her and think she's a p I, which is also
Speaker 1: what people say to her when they find out what
Speaker 1: she does. And then they start to tell me how
Speaker 1: they would be a good investigator. And they tell me
Speaker 1: either how they located their long lost second cousin or
Speaker 1: they found their husband cheating, and they watch all the
Speaker 1: cops shows on TV. The thing is, Kitty is pretty
Speaker 1: much the opposite of what you'd see on a cop show.
Speaker 1: She's been an investigator in many forms, but currently most
Speaker 1: of what she does is investigate the police in cases
Speaker 1: where someone is wrongfully convicted or an officer abuses their authority.
Speaker 1: So no, I'm not a police investigator. All right. So
Speaker 1: you've done a lot of different things in your career,
Speaker 1: but boiled down, what is it that you do. I
Speaker 1: gather information, period, That's what I do. I don't censor it,
Speaker 1: I don't editorialize it. I am a fact finder. However,
Speaker 1: the facts that I find are about some very interesting
Speaker 1: and unusual situations. Right now, Kitty is a criminal investigator,
Speaker 1: but for a while she was what was called a
Speaker 1: full service investigator, which means she did a little bit
Speaker 1: of everything, domestic people, cheating, um, locating missing people. Now
Speaker 1: she does civil rights work, investigating cases similar to George
Speaker 1: Floyd's where there's been an incident with the police. My
Speaker 1: other clients are incarcerated and they may not be guilty.
Speaker 1: So it's an interesting mixture of work, but primarily I
Speaker 1: do civil rights and post conviction work. Well, I was
Speaker 1: asking Kitty questions. I was surprised by how much goes
Speaker 1: into being a p I that you'd never know without
Speaker 1: talking to one. But some of the time, just like
Speaker 1: on TV, Katy ends up in a courtroom in front
Speaker 1: of a jury, presenting the facts and making her case.
Speaker 1: Do you like picking a courtroom? Love it? It's the
Speaker 1: best time because I think we're all different people at
Speaker 1: different times. I'm not pretending, but I am performing. I'm
Speaker 1: performing the Kitty Hailey who is the investigator? I mean
Speaker 1: sometimes on my Grandma and you know, I sit on
Speaker 1: the floor with a couple of grandkids and I play
Speaker 1: games and I made them cookies and do all the
Speaker 1: things that grandma's do, But when I'm in a courtroom,
Speaker 1: I have control. Long before she was dominating courtrooms and
Speaker 1: swaying juries, young Kitty Haley grew up a pretty straight laced,
Speaker 1: brainy kid. I was a young geek. I read a
Speaker 1: lot of books. I mean, Nancy Drew was my best
Speaker 1: friend for the longest time, so maybe that was part
Speaker 1: of it. I don't know. She had a brother and
Speaker 1: a sister. They were a tight family unit, had dinner
Speaker 1: every night with mom and Dad were Jewish, so we
Speaker 1: went to synagogue every Friday night together. I don't think
Speaker 1: any of us ever got in trouble once in our
Speaker 1: entire lives. Even so, growing up in a non Jewish neighborhood,
Speaker 1: she saw a lot of prejudice against her family. There
Speaker 1: were places she couldn't go, things she couldn't do. So
Speaker 1: I knew what it was like to be an outcast.
Speaker 1: I knew what it was like to have an equity.
Speaker 1: And I think if I had not been an investigator,
Speaker 1: I probably would have end up in some sort of
Speaker 1: social work at some point in time, because the inequities
Speaker 1: of the world are so great and I can't stand
Speaker 1: a look at them. I need to be a part
Speaker 1: of the solution, not accorded the problem. In high school,
Speaker 1: she was great at art, so she went to school
Speaker 1: for it, and afterwards she got a job teaching art
Speaker 1: at a high school in Camden, New Jersey. It was
Speaker 1: a predominantly black school during the Civil Rights movement, and
Speaker 1: Kitty was asked to leave the school system after being
Speaker 1: blamed for causing an uprising against the school system. I
Speaker 1: didn't I didn't stop it. Apparently, she just helped the
Speaker 1: students with their manifesto. Yeah, I think that was my problem.
Speaker 1: I put the help them to put them anifescially together.
Speaker 1: And the problem was that I did during school time,
Speaker 1: during on school copying machines. So yeah, I shouldn't have
Speaker 1: done that maybe. Unsurprisingly, this is when she had encountered
Speaker 1: with a police captain who ended up becoming her husband.
Speaker 1: He was branching off from the force to start his
Speaker 1: own p I firm, and she started to help out
Speaker 1: while she got another teaching job at Rutgers and I
Speaker 1: worked as a teacher counselor for a couple of years,
Speaker 1: doing investigative work part time, and then eventually just transitioned
Speaker 1: over because it's what I really wanted to do. So
Speaker 1: that's only four years old. Kitty Haley was a p I,
Speaker 1: but it definitely wasn't glamorous, you know, we were we
Speaker 1: have a small agency initially, and it was really it
Speaker 1: was really difficult because it was just my husband enough.
Speaker 1: They took whatever work they could get, which was mostly
Speaker 1: domestic work. People cheating, abuse cases, custody issues, families stealing
Speaker 1: from each other, messy stuff. My kids went to college
Speaker 1: because I did domestic work. I mean, God was cheating people.
Speaker 1: It was wonderful. Infidelity pays the bills. Yeah, absolutely, the
Speaker 1: stereotypical stuff people think of when you're a p I,
Speaker 1: sneaking around, following people, looking in their windows to see
Speaker 1: when the light goes on or off. Yeah, I've done
Speaker 1: all that stuff. I sat on surveillance for days and
Speaker 1: nights and weeks and um I used to bring my
Speaker 1: kids on surveillance when they were little. Sometimes they'd be
Speaker 1: so busy that her husband would be working right through
Speaker 1: bedtime when Kitty had to go do her surveillance work.
Speaker 1: So she threw the kids in the back of the
Speaker 1: car with a blanket and I go out. We can
Speaker 1: all stood on surveillance together. I read the books. I
Speaker 1: tell them stories as we were driving, you know, hook
Speaker 1: them in with seatbelts and give them things to play with,
Speaker 1: and every once in a while I go, Okay, guys,
Speaker 1: hang on, mom's gotta go. You did what we had
Speaker 1: to do. We'll get back to our story in a second. First,
Speaker 1: a word from Express Employment Professionals. A strong work ethic
Speaker 1: takes pride in a job well done. This is you.
Speaker 1: But to get an honest day's work, you need a callback.
Speaker 1: You need a job. Express Employment Professionals can help. We'll
Speaker 1: connect you to the right company. We're committed to your
Speaker 1: success and never charge a fee to find you a job.
Speaker 1: Express Nose Jobs. Get to know Express find your location
Speaker 1: at express pros dot com or on the Express Jobs app.
Speaker 1: Now back to on the job. Despite the dick life
Speaker 1: of starting a p I firm, Kitty was hooked. I
Speaker 1: loved the excitement, the adventure, and it was creative in
Speaker 1: its own way. Also, having a background in art made
Speaker 1: me capable of observing things that other people didn't see.
Speaker 1: She picked up on details. She could recreate rooms that
Speaker 1: she was invited into during theft investigations, and a client
Speaker 1: might be able to point out the thing that they
Speaker 1: said was stolen from them. This is one of the
Speaker 1: many skills that's helped Kitty stay in the game as
Speaker 1: long as she has. What makes someone good at what
Speaker 1: you do? Wow, I always tell people who are interested
Speaker 1: in my field, they have to be able to do
Speaker 1: several things really well. They have to be able to think.
Speaker 1: You have to be able to think and analyze. You
Speaker 1: have to be able to observe and put your own
Speaker 1: personal prejudices out of the way while you're observing what
Speaker 1: happened or what the evidences. She says, you also have
Speaker 1: to know a lot about the law and how the
Speaker 1: court system works, so that you know what constitutes evidence.
Speaker 1: Evidence is really important because everything you do has to
Speaker 1: be admissible in a court of law, or you can't
Speaker 1: do it. One of the most overlook skills, she says,
Speaker 1: writing You've got to be able to put together a
Speaker 1: good report. If you can't write what you did to
Speaker 1: explain it to an attorney, then you might as well
Speaker 1: never have done the work. Basically, you might do seventy
Speaker 1: hours worth of surveillance and finding information, computer research and
Speaker 1: interviewing people, and all you can give to an attorney
Speaker 1: is a five page report. So it's like a master
Speaker 1: class in essay writing. Sounds like there's a lot of
Speaker 1: skills they don't tell you about on law and order
Speaker 1: s Vu. Yes, so you have to be able to
Speaker 1: deal with people, communicate well, and know how to build
Speaker 1: so that you can keep your job. That's the whole thing.
Speaker 1: It's a business. People forget that. They think this is oh,
Speaker 1: this is great, but you're if you're working for yourself,
Speaker 1: you've got to do all of that or good work
Speaker 1: for somebody else, which you can do. Kitty says. There
Speaker 1: are so many respects of the work. You can always
Speaker 1: try it all out and figure out what you'd like
Speaker 1: to specialize in. Especially in the age of social media.
Speaker 1: You could be a techie, you could work online investigations.
Speaker 1: There's a ton of different ways to go about it.
Speaker 1: That's not what I'd like to do. It's not my
Speaker 1: comfort zone. Put me in front of somebody and I
Speaker 1: will interview them until I get every list bit of
Speaker 1: information out of them, and that I do well, Kitty says.
Speaker 1: In the beginning, she was saying yes to any job
Speaker 1: that came her way. She had to. That can get
Speaker 1: you in trouble. There was a nice couple who came
Speaker 1: to see us. They had just come from a funeral, actually,
Speaker 1: and so they were well dressed, and she wanted us
Speaker 1: to find her missing children. The woman's ex husband had
Speaker 1: taken the kids. It's not uncommon in these cases, so
Speaker 1: Katie got involved, only to later find out that without
Speaker 1: their nice clothing, they were members of the Hell's Angels
Speaker 1: who were involved in a dispute with a rival gang.
Speaker 1: We were right in the middle of it, and I
Speaker 1: was stupid. I didn't know anything about this. It was
Speaker 1: my first introduction to anything criminal. I only learned about
Speaker 1: it when I left their house and four big black
Speaker 1: SUVs pulled me off to the side of the road
Speaker 1: and four people identify themselves as the FBI and wanted
Speaker 1: to know what I was doing in the house. That
Speaker 1: was not something that a twenty four year old should
Speaker 1: have to go through. It was scary. Do they make
Speaker 1: you second guess? Oh my god, like, what am I doing? No,
Speaker 1: it may be learned to be more careful about who
Speaker 1: my clients are, at least to know what was really
Speaker 1: expected of me. Because my clients right now, some of
Speaker 1: them are guilty as hell. You know, some of them
Speaker 1: are innocent, but you don't know until you investigate it,
Speaker 1: so I need to. I've learned to investigate my clients
Speaker 1: as well as to investigate what they want me to investigate.
Speaker 1: Do you ever do jobs for people that you kind
Speaker 1: of don't feel comfortable doing. Yeah, but I'm not them.
Speaker 1: I'm still doing my job. So take any case where
Speaker 1: there's a prosecutor and a defendant. Whether she's hired by
Speaker 1: the defense or the prosecution, her job doesn't change. So
Speaker 1: if there was a bullet, we're going to find a bullet.
Speaker 1: If you have a witness who says she saw X,
Speaker 1: Y and Z, both investigators going to find X, Y
Speaker 1: and Z. The prosecution investigator and the defense investigator part
Speaker 1: both going to find the same information because the facts
Speaker 1: don't change. I'm not supporting a person, I'm finding out facts. Still,
Speaker 1: she knows that what she does has a huge impact
Speaker 1: on people's lives. When I ask if she's okay with that,
Speaker 1: she tells me about a case where a guy called
Speaker 1: Kitty saying he suspected his wife was cheating on him
Speaker 1: every day when he went to work. He wanted her
Speaker 1: to find out. It turns out his wife was with
Speaker 1: the neighbor next door. Kitty had the evidence and testified
Speaker 1: in their court hearing. The following morning, I'm in my
Speaker 1: office and I get a phone call and it's the
Speaker 1: woman who I testified against, and she says to me,
Speaker 1: how can you sleep with yourself doing the ugly work
Speaker 1: that you do, spying on people peering in windows? How
Speaker 1: do you sleep with yourself? And I remember saying to her,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't sleep with myself. I speak with
Speaker 1: my husband. You, on the out of hand, sleep with
Speaker 1: somebody else's, says them. So no, I'm not the people
Speaker 1: I'm working for or against. I'm still me with my
Speaker 1: own ethics and my own morals. But if in the
Speaker 1: process I help somebody make a life decision that will
Speaker 1: change the course of their life, or allow them to
Speaker 1: make an informed decision, then I've done a good job.
Speaker 1: Kitty has a deep respect for impact her work has,
Speaker 1: good or bad, which is why over the last many
Speaker 1: years she has become a nationally recognized investigative ethicist. She
Speaker 1: literally wrote the book on ethical standards for being an investigator,
Speaker 1: and she tours the country giving lectures on how to
Speaker 1: do this job in a responsible way. Recently, she was
Speaker 1: doing a session with a pretty elite group of investigators,
Speaker 1: and somebody asked me the question, how do you show empathy?
Speaker 1: And it just blew me for a loop, and I said,
Speaker 1: I don't I feel it. Being a p I sounds
Speaker 1: like a cool job, and Kitty says it is. But
Speaker 1: on the flip side, there are times when you are
Speaker 1: talking to a person on the worst day of their life,
Speaker 1: people who have lost a loved one or were a
Speaker 1: victim of a crime, people scared for their life, And
Speaker 1: if you don't appreciate that, then maybe you shouldn't be
Speaker 1: doing this job. You've got to understand that everyone has
Speaker 1: been traumatized in some way, and I'm w fitness to
Speaker 1: their horror and I need to record it. I need
Speaker 1: to be able to elicit the information from them so
Speaker 1: that I can take their statements so that when I
Speaker 1: present it in court it has a meaning and gravitas.
Speaker 1: And that's that comes from respect. Talking with Kitty reminded
Speaker 1: me of something pretty amazing. I heard the famous therapist
Speaker 1: and author Esther Perel say on a podcast once when
Speaker 1: she was talking about our relationship to our jobs. She said,
Speaker 1: next time you're at dinner with new friends or at
Speaker 1: a party and you're about to ask the routine question
Speaker 1: what do you do for a living? Instead ask what
Speaker 1: would you do if you weren't doing the job you do? Now.
Speaker 1: That's always stuck with me because I feel like so
Speaker 1: many of us right off what we can do for
Speaker 1: because we don't have the education for it, or we
Speaker 1: didn't grow up around it, or we don't look the
Speaker 1: are But sometimes what qualifies you for a job is
Speaker 1: your deepest beliefs, the thing that gets you up in
Speaker 1: the morning. Kitty still looks like a high school art teacher,
Speaker 1: but her desire led her to being one of the
Speaker 1: most respected investigators in her industry. That desire she had
Speaker 1: as a young nerdy outcast to be part of the
Speaker 1: solution rather than the problem. I asked her if she
Speaker 1: still felt that way about her work. Oh, my, every day.
Speaker 1: You know, we work so hard on the case and
Speaker 1: don't always see the end of it. Sometimes all the
Speaker 1: information goes to an attorney and you never know what happened. Wow,
Speaker 1: I didn't even think of that. That's some very delayed satisfaction,
Speaker 1: if any at all. Yeah. Okay, So I worked with
Speaker 1: a gentleman from Philadelphia. I could say his name because
Speaker 1: he is now free. It's jim Dennis. He was wrongfully
Speaker 1: incarcerated almost twenty years ago. Jimmy Dennis is an R
Speaker 1: and B musician in Philadelphia, and when he was twenty one,
Speaker 1: he was wrongfully convicted of our murder. No physical evidence,
Speaker 1: no weapon, no DNA, and he was put on death row.
Speaker 1: Kitty worked on his case, and eighteen years later I
Speaker 1: was sitting in a coffee shop and I got a
Speaker 1: telephone call and a voice said, Mrs Kitty, I just
Speaker 1: want to thank you, and I said, who is this?
Speaker 1: He said, this is Jimmy Dennis. I'm on my way
Speaker 1: home from prison. And I said in that coffee shop
Speaker 1: and cried like a baby. It was so wonderful to
Speaker 1: know that work I had done for eighteen years had
Speaker 1: finally resulted in someone going home to a family, a
Speaker 1: baby he had never held, a child he had not seen.
Speaker 1: You know, it was somebody whose life was able to
Speaker 1: be not for hole again, but at least she was
Speaker 1: able to live a life outside of the four walls
Speaker 1: of an eight by ten, which he was in for
Speaker 1: eighteen years. You know that was humbling. So yeah, I
Speaker 1: love what I do. It's not easy. It's hard work.
Speaker 1: It's long hours, and it's so freaking satisfying. It's great,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to do it until i can't stand
Speaker 1: up anymore. For On the Job, I'm Modus Gray. To
Speaker 1: learn more about Kitty and her work, go to Kitty
Speaker 1: Haley dot com. Thanks for listening to On the Job,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Express Employment Professionals. The season of
Speaker 1: On the Job is produced by Audiation. The episodes were
Speaker 1: written and produced by me Otis Gray. Our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Sandy Smallens. The show is mixed by Matt Noble
Speaker 1: for Audiation Studios at the Loft in Bronxville, New York.
Speaker 1: Music by Blue Dot Sessions. Find us on I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and Apple Podcasts. If you liked what you heard,
Speaker 1: please consider rating and reviewing the show on Apple Podcasts
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen. We'll see you next time. For
Speaker 1: more inspiring stories about discovering your life's work. Audiation