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CHAPTER 4
COVER-UP PHASE
THE POLICE
In July 1988, Omaha police officers in the Robbery and Sex
Unit received an unexpected visit from their boss, Chief of
Police Robert Wadman. According to the officers' own account,
related by Nebraska Foster Care Review Board official Dennis
Carlson in testimony to the Legislature's Executive Board,
they took precautions to keep Wadman out of their work on
Larry King.
Excerpts of Carlson's remarks, from the Executive Board
minutes of December 19, 1988, show that the officers feared
a police cover-up of King's activities, from within the department:
[Officer Carmean] told me some things which I found to be
somewhat startling. I asked if he was interested in information
regarding Larry King and he said, yes we are, we're
conducting what he called a supersensitive investigation of
Larry King and he said this investigation was so supersensitive
that they were not even using the steno pool in the
Omaha Police Department.
They were handwriting their police reports, and he also
told me that Chief Wadman had come to their unit and
directly asked if they were investigating Larry King....
Investigator Carmean told me, we lied to the Chief and we
said, no, we are not investigating Larry King. OK, so that
conversation took place on July 20th of 1988.
After we were presented with that information we had
some concerns as to what was going on in the Omaha Police
Department We were concerned about if we gave this infor­
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