On Q Professional Investigations

In an incredibly sad stage of events a Hamilton policeman thought his wife was having an affair with a Beverly officer and shot him in front of a crowded coffee shop before killing himself hours later. The morning of the shooting, Kenneth Nagy confronted Jason Lantych on the phone with his suspicions, and Lantych asked if they could meet in person, telling Nagy, “It’s not what you think, Ken.” Reports show that Lantych suggested meeting at Starbucks and joked that it was because he didn’t want Nagy to shoot him. Whether or not this ill-timed line had given Nagy the idea in the first place, we might not ever know. But after the initial shooting, Nagy returned to the coffee shop several hours later and shot himself in the head.

Although interestingly, prosecutors say that the only person who actually committed a crime was Nagy, and as he was now deceased there was no need for further investigation of this incident. Lantych ultimately survived the ordeal due to quick-thinking bystanders who were able to give rudimentary medical attention to Lantych until he paramedics were able to see him.

Nagy, 43, was a 19-year veteran of the Hamilton department. He and his wife, Katherine, had two children. His wife knew Lantych from her work as the Beverly department’s domestic violence victim advocate. Lantych also tells reporters that he and Nagy’s wife, Katherine, were never intimate and that she had once “poured her heart out,” to Lantych.

The prosecutor’s report said that on the day of the shooting, Nagy called in sick for his midnight shift, woke up his wife, and told her he believed she was having an affair with Lantych; they also discussed divorce, the report said. Found with Nagy’s body at Starbucks was a journal and copy of a suicide note, in which he said he intended to shoot Lantych and kill himself.

Not for the first time has this kind of story been heard of. In fact, there are several stories of officers having affairs with their colleagues and superiors wives. It’s been called one of the most problematic interdepartmental issues within the ranks of officers.

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Blaise Fragione, 38, admits that in October 2008 he knocked out the victim, named only as “F.”, with a blow to the head, severed most of his penis with a razor knife and threw it in the toilet.

Fragione says that he “lost it” after F. came to tell him he was having a relationship with “Mado”, his partner of 14 years and mother of his two children.

“The sudden revelation of this adultery made him lose control,” said Fragione’s lawyer, Marc Ceccaldi. “He is well aware that he caused a significant trauma.”

Fragione faces up to 15 years in prison if found guilty of “aggravated assault accompanied by mutilation”.

The victim maintains that Fragione forced him to go to his home, where he tied him up and mutilated him.

F. is “extremely fragile… his life has been completely destroyed,” said his lawyer, Jorge Mendes Constante

The shortening of his penis to three centimetres (just over an inch) when flaccid and five centimetres when erect had resulted in “a deterioration of his self-perception, affecting his social, interpersonal and sex life.”

The victim is awaiting surgical reconstruction.

His former lover has returned to her original partner, whom she now plans to marry.

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What do private investigators say are the most common signs of a cheating spouse?

When you suspect infidelity in your relationship it can be difficult to determine whether or not your suspicions are valid and if so, what to do next. At PInow, we surveyed our network of trusted infidelity investigators to find out what, in their experience, are the common indications of infidelity in a relationship. The following graphic displays the six major signs of a cheating spouse, what to expect in an infidelity investigation and other statistics on infidelity and marriage.

And the 6 common signs of a cheating spouse are …

1. Changes in Intimacy 2. Suspicious Phone Habits 3. Changes in Appearance 4. Suspicious Internet Use 5. Changes in Work Routine 6. Changes in Bathing Habits

Other signs included concealing credit card statements or having bills mailed to a P.O. box, finding strange receipts, going out or running long errands without the spouse, flirting with friends of the opposite sex and a change in overall attitude. Infidelity investigations can cost anywhere from $500 to $5,000 and last anywhere from 4 hours to 6 months. Most investigators said their investigations verify infidelity 75-100% of the time. Other statistics show that when spouses cheat, 55% of the time it’s the husband while 45% of the time it’s the wife. 30-60% of married people will cheat on their spouse according to a range that compensates for dishonesty among study participants. 74% of husbands and 68% of wives say they would have an affair if they knew they wouldn’t get caught. 85% of wives who suspect their husbands are cheating are correct 85% of the time, while husbands who suspect their wives are cheating are correct 50% of the time. Marriage statistics were provided by the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy, Indiana University, Business Week, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal

At what point are you crossing the line when you invade a partner’s privacy?

When Patricia Masterson’s boyfriend broke into her email account in search of evidence that she had been cheating, she was deeply offended by the violation of her privacy. The fact that she had, indeed, been cheating hardly seemed like a good excuse.

She changed her tune 10 years later, when, married and pregnant, Masterson innocently spotted a text message on her husband’s cellphone from a woman regarding a baby. Her husband said it must have been sent to him by mistake, and Masterson, sensitive to privacy, left it alone — until a few months later, when the woman contacted Masterson through Facebook to reveal she’d recently given birth to her husband’s child.

“I became a snooper,” said Masterson, now 39, a Defense Department contractor living in northern Virginia. She tore through cellphone records and installed software to recover deleted emails, gathering all the details she could. “It was so not me; up until that point I had believed in absolute privacy.”

When, if ever, is it OK to invade a romantic partner’s privacy? Masterson and others who have perpetrated or suffered betrayal (or both) say it’s often the only way to confirm suspicions of infidelity when all else fails.

But it can take much less for people to snoop.

Thirty-three percent of dating couples and 37 percent of spouses — slightly more women than men — say they have checked their partner’s email or call history on the sly, according to a survey last year by the gadget shopping site Retrevo.com, which queried more than 1,000 people online. Among those under 25, almost half reported snooping. Just 9 percent discovered evidence of cheating.

Retrevo.com spokeswoman Jennifer Jacobson said she doesn’t think young couples are less trusting. “It’s just that technology has made everyone’s communications highly accessible and people probably don’t see it as a violation of trust, because of how easy it is to do.”

Larry Rosen, author of “iDisorder: Understanding Our Obsession With Technology and Overcoming Its Hold on Us” (Palgrave Macmillan), said millennials raised on a culture of Facebook stalking view privacy differently from baby boomers or Gen Xers (roughly people over 35).

“For older people, the lines are clear: Private is private, public is public,” said Rosen, a research psychologist and professor at California State University at Dominguez Hills. “For younger people it’s much more murky.”

Flirting with fire

If technology has made it easier to spy, it has also made it easier to cheat, muddying what is considered appropriate relationships. Facebook invites flirting with exes, and some people never know whom their partner is texting. Is that OK? Depends on the couple. But it can get out of hand.

The ping of a saucy text message stimulates the brain’s pleasure centers, as does cocaine, and people want more, Rosen said.

He recommends people abide by a five-minute “e-waiting period” before sending an electronic communication so that they can be more clear-headed about whether it’s a good idea.

“It’s an issue of higher-level thinking versus lower-order responding,” Rosen said. “We have turned into salivating dogs, and we have to back off a bit.”

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It’s not the kind of cheating most victims had in mind.

As millions of lonely hearts and lusty pants head online to find mates and dates, those who specialize in finding skeletons in the closet are warning online daters to be careful.

This comes a few days after a Toronto human resources firm called for all dating sites to make users supply a criminal background check as part of the registration process.

Ottawa private investigator Robert Gater said that’s “part of a good first step.”

Over the past few years he’s been hired more than a dozen times to find any available dirt on potential boyfriends or girlfriends found online.

A criminal background check will tell someone what their lover has done in the past, but not necessarily what they’re up to now.

That information comes from people like Gater, who do surveillance on top of research.

There are several cases of killers using dating sites to find victims. Investigators in Long Island, N.Y., are currently hunting the so-called Craigslist Ripper, wanted for 10 murders.

The cases in Ottawa appear to be more financially motivated.

“One guy hired me who was in Florida but met a woman online here who said she was in the middle of a divorce, was well-off but her income was in escrow. He lent her money. Sure enough, she’s happily married and was currently doing this to two or three other guys,” he said.

Gater said sometimes he’s asked to get involved before potential victims find out what the motive is — online.

“She sent him back some stunningly attractive photos,” said Gater. “They weren’t of her. She looked nothing like that.”

The woman was also married and was simply taking the photos off a stranger’s public Facebook profile.

“The guy was quite devastated. They had conversations for hours, stringing him along for the better part of the year. He thought she was smokin’ hot.”

Gater figures about 35% of all men on dating sites are married. He said the liars out there are about 50/50 men and women, but they’re after different things.

“Men are looking to cheat or have a criminal record they’re lying about,” said Gater. “Women are doing it for the fantasy or financial fraud.”

Gater said he was hired to check out the “ripped young Greek dude” who turned out to be a short Asian man. When confronted, he claimed he used to be a ripped, young Greek man until he had reconstructive surgery following a motorcycle crash.

“That somehow changed his race and shortened him a good four inches,” said Gater. “Be careful out there.”

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In this business we often see checklists–catalogs of clues that a spouse might be cheating.

A quick Google search for “signs of infidelity” returns no fewer than 200,000 hits for “how to spot a cheating spouse,” how to tell if he’s stepping out, ways to tell if he’s got a new lover. These lists are almost always the same: new perfume, new interest in physical appearance, secretive phone calls, mysterious expenditures, etc.

If you’ve ever had reason to perform that particular Google search, you know the feeling: it’s that little kernel of doubt that sneaks into a marriage and destroys confidence, trust, and peace. Maybe it presents itself in small doses, meting out insecurity in infinitesimal portions. Maybe it walks into the room and screams.

Either way, those lurking unknowns and suspicions fuel a growing unease that can rapidly escalate to anxiety, stress, even a sort of mental paralysis. And the cheater experiences a form of anxiety as well—the stress that accompanies the need to lie to maintain a façade of normalcy.

Anxiety – The cuckold/cuckquean’s perspective
Anxiety is a byproduct of fear, and fear of the unknown is, perhaps, the most distressing variety. Anxiety closes down the thinking brain and activates the body-protecting lizard brain, the reacting brain. As Gregory Hartley puts it in his book, How to Spot a Liar, philanderers are, “…brokers of anxiety.” When a person thinks his spouse is cheating on him, he receives a jolt to his idea of self and his frame of reference.

We organize our idea of self by assembling input from others and various situations. Our frame of reference, our view of the outside world, is prejudiced by experience. When one suspects infidelity, both self and frame of reference are questioned. Confusion and emotion take charge…anxiety rents space in the brain.

Anxiety – The cheater’s perspective
When people have affairs, they lie to maintain their cover. Big and small non-truths leak out in a sludge of constant mendacity. From hiding credit card receipts to sneaking off to the back porch for late-night small talk via cell phone, every aspect of a deceptive person’s life is caught up in half-truths, fabrication, and deceit. And when someone tells a lie, he places himself under stress. He lives in constant fear of discovery.

Stress and the Sympathetic Nervous System
When the mammalian body perceives a threat, the sympathetic nervous system takes over and kick-starts the body’s “fight-or-flight” response. Blood is routed away from the face and skin to the muscles. Blood is diverted away from the digestive tract. The bladder no longer has the ability to contract and expel waste. The liver floods the blood stream with glucose, preparing for physical activity. Heart rate and respiration increase and nostrils flare, offering the lizard brain a heavy dose of oxygenated blood. Metabolism is heightened, sweating intensifies. Pupils dilate to collect as much data about the threat as possible. Gregory Hartley calls this, “your mind at war.”

The outward signs are always visible, if sometimes only in very minute forms. The stressed person’s hands may shake. His complexion may appear pallid. His mouth and lips dry out, a result of dramatically reduced blood flow. Mucosa shrink, leading to pale thin lips and drooping lower eyelids. The brow clinches and draws downward. Shoulders draw tight in preparation for defense. Elbows are in, close to the ribcage in a defensive posture.

Inside, the stressed person feels jittery, hypersensitive. Thanks to a lack of blood in the digestive system, the person feels a sensation of butterflies in the stomach; he may even feel nausea. With the heart racing blood away from the skin, the anxious person feels a high core temperature and cool skin, that clammy feeling. His focus becomes narrow and sense of hearing is directed at the source of the threat. He hears his own heartbeat. His mind recedes to a primitive state, and emotions work their way involuntarily to the fore. The person under stress often becomes defensive, argumentative, and emotional.

These systems turn on at the cost of rational thought, leading to what Seth Godin calls “lizard brain.” Irrationality is the rule at this point.

How to stop the cycle: The Simple (well…maybe not so simple) Fix for Stress

The cheater
Simple answer – Do not cheat. Alternative answer – stop telling lies.

In one case last year, we were hired by a woman’s attorney to document a philandering husband’s activities. We placed him under heavy surveillance–three cars and four investigators. We documented the man’s every move, dates, picnics, overnight visits, etc. Confronted with his lies, the man took an unusual tack, opting to eliminate his ongoing stress and simply carry on the affair in the open. He even brought his new girlfriend to a meeting at the attorney’s office. He thereby removed the burden of a lie, and his stress level seemed to drop. From a purely practical perspective, this wasn’t a bad call.

Ending the affair is always the best solution. But coming clean about an affair can at least remove the deceit variable from the equation and, along with it, some of the accompanying stress. And it might even allow the dallier to regain access to rational thought, which just might lead to more productive discourse.

The Cuckold/Cuckquean
Simple answer – remove the unknown.
Again, anxiety is a byproduct of fear, often fear of the unknown. Do not guess. Do not assume. Know. Anxiety leads to “lizard brain,” and in that state, irrationality is the rule.

Shakespeare didn’t need to understand the sympathetic nervous system to recognize it at work on the human rational mind. He sketched this lizard-brain descent from suspicion to anxiety to madness (to brilliant effect) in his 1603 play “Othello” in which a man desperately in love with his wife allows his unwarranted suspicions to prompt a series of escalating irrational acts, ending in tragedy—the old one-two punch of murder-suicide, always, unfortunately, performed in that order.

Though potentially painful, it is always best to eliminate the unknown. Once a person has the facts…once he eliminates the unknown, he can remove anxiety, and (potentially) act rationally.

Conclusion.
For the cheating spouse: Gregory Hartley says, “You will simplify your life enormously if you eliminate complete fabrication from your repertoire.” Simply put, stop lying and placing yourself under needless stress.

For the spouse who fears a partner is having an affair: get the facts. Consider hiring a competent and qualified investigator to learn the facts on your behalf. Find out what’s really happening, then act rationally from a place of knowledge and power.

Here at ONQPI Investigations, we believe that our role is to help our clients contain the unknown. By gathering documented and verifiable information, we hope to help people move from a state of fear and helplessness to higher cognitive function…and rational action.

According to AshleyMadison.com, the Hispanic community is “the fastest growing community when it comes to infidelity.”

In a press release sent by the self-described “largest dating site for married people”, the company states that since launching the Spanish-language version of their website in 2009, 1.1 million Latinos have signed up, accounting for 31 percent of their total new membership.

The company further suggests that according to their data, “Hispanic members have affairs at the youngest age: Average age of 27 for women and 34 for men (compared to 33 for women and 40 for men in the general U.S. population).”

Considering the stereotype of Latinos as family-oriented and with conservative social values, this may come as a bit of a surprise.

In a 2010 review of General Social Survey data, one intrepid blogger took a look at the “relationship between ancestry and philandering in the U.S.” The writer’s analysis indicates that 19.6 percent of married Mexican men and 12.4 percent of married Mexican women have cheated on their spouses, whereas the rates for Americans (i.e. those who claim this as their only ethnicity) were 28.2 percent for married men and 15.5 percent for married women, indexing over 40 percent and 25 percent, respectively, versus the Mexican respondents.

Persons of the Iberian peninsula (Spain and Portugal) rated low for women, 10.9 percent, but quite high for men, at 38.5 percent.

While Hispanics are different from Mexicans or Iberians, and while perhaps presenting a bit of a statistical case for the machista reputation of Latino men, the findings possibly reinforce the stereotype that Hispanics are more socially conservative that the U.S. mainstream when it comes to this issue.

A separate finding reported by AshleyMadison.com in their press release corroborates this, somewhat, indicating that Hispanics who are cheating on their spouses “are choosing to have fewer partners: U.S. members average three affair partners per year; Hispanic members average only one affair partner per year.”

However, in 2009, the National Institutes of Health published a report which showed that Latino youths are less apt to protect against sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy due to their focus “on the emotional and social repercussions of potentially revealing infidelity by advocating condom use than the physical repercussions of unsafe sex.”

The findings suggest that this group, Latino youths, are promiscuous and prone to concealing their infidelity, behavior which could persist and lead to the kinds of findings noted by AshleyMadison.com.

So, the jury is still out. The people at AshleyMadison.com may be onto something, maybe they know what’s really going on behind the curtains of Latino marriages. To be sure, they recently announced they are accelerating the launch of their website for Mexico, hoping to launch by end of November.

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Infidelity in your fifties can be particularly unsettling, says Sarah Cornwell. But you can move on and it can lead to positive change.

Finding out that your partner is having an affair is devastating at any age, but if you’re in your fifties and you’ve been together for years the shock is seismic. Suddenly you’re forced to see the person you thought you knew in a totally new light.

“It makes you feel that all the certainties in the world are collapsing around you,” says Andrew G Marshall, one of the wisest and most experienced marital therapists in the business. “Even if you accept your own contribution towards the problem, the realisation that you get rewarded like this just because you took your eye off the ball not only undermines your trust in your partner but in the general sense that the world is a fair place.”

The fifties are a classic time for affairs. The sense of ‘Is that all there is?’ hangs heavy in the air and the kids are no longer the glue that binds couples together. But no matter how commonplace infidelity has become (it is estimated that 30 to 40 per cent of us will stray at some stage) it is always painful.

So how can you handle the emotional chaos of those first few weeks, when you can’t eat, your brain won’t stop and the only thing that gets you through the night is a hefty dose of Temazepam?

With any luck, at this stage in life, you’re able to overcome the initial impulse to reach for the nearest blade – tempting though it may be – or make off with the mistress’ kitten, like MP’s wife Christine Hemming. Rather than storming out, you’re more likely to take a considered view of what you really want.

“I had always assumed that if my husband was unfaithful I’d leave him,” says Anna, who discovered her husband’s two-year affair with a colleague three years ago. “But when it actually happened to me I reacted very differently, I think because I’d learned from previous crises in our relationship that impetuous gestures are usually counter-productive as well as hard to go back on. I thought very carefully about what was at stake.

“My initial instinct was to tell the whole world the gory details – his parents, our kids, the taxi driver, my hairdresser. I held back, and now I’m so relieved I did. We told the kids the bare minimum, and I found that it was better to talk to just one or two good friends, because otherwise I got too much conflicting advice.

“I remember times when it was a huge relief to be with people who didn’t know anything about the affair.”

Andrew Marshall’s book, How Can I Ever Trust You Again?, speaks to the partner who has had the affair as well as the one who discovered it. Marshall says the hardest thing about the immediate aftermath is learning to live with uncertainty. He urges couples to accept the complexity of their emotions.

“It’s normal to be filled with all sorts of contradictory feelings: love and hate, hope and despair, fear and relief. We don’t like living with ambivalence, and often push ourselves to come down on one side or the other, even if it makes things worse. And there is a tendency to think, I’m in so much pain we’ve got to solve this now. In fact, there is no ticking clock.”

It’s reassuring that 25 years spent counselling couples through the aftermath of affairs has convinced Marshall that, despite all the misery and pain, the soul-searching that follows can make those relationships that survive stronger and better.

“There are many positives: you and your partner will probably speak more to each other in five days than you have in five years. Affairs have the capacity to bring all the unburied bodies in your relationship to the surface. So you’re not just dealing with the affair itself, but also with the long-term issues that you ignored beforehand, which usually turn out to be not as big or as scary as you thought. And that, ultimately, must be a good thing.”

How to cope with the shock: Andrew Marshall’s tips

Resist the temptation to throw your partner out straight away. You need answers to your questions.

Equally, don’t forgive too soon. You can’t forgive until you know what’s happened and seen its full impact.

Don’t make major decisions when you’re in shock. Put off the decision to stay or go for as long as possible.

Tell your kids the absolute minimum: “We’re having problems and we’re sorting it out” is quite enough.

Don’t tell the world and his dog. What you need is a sensible friend who won’t tell you what to do, preferably someone who doesn’t know your partner well (and who hasn’t gone through a bitter divorce themselves).

The healing process starts when you give your partner the chance to tell you.

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Facebook has apparently become the new “lipstick on your collar.”

Twenty percent of divorces involve Facebook and 80 percent of divorce lawyers have reported a spike in the number of cases that use social media for evidence, according to a survey by the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers.

It’s so common that there’s a website dedicated to Facebook cheating.

FacebookCheating.com’s founder says he started the site after his now ex-wife had an affair with an old flame she re-ignited on Facebook.

The site is an outlet that gives tips on how to catch a cheating spouse in the age of social networks and heartbreaks across the Web.

“Facebook has ruined my marriage of almost 20 years,” a man wrote on another support group website, marriagehelper.com. “My wife ‘reconnected’ with old boy friends and even started innocently flirting with a stranger.”

Stories of infidelity posted on such websites illustrate how the social media network has helped to reconnect former lovers.

Even celebrities are not immune.

Actress Eva Longoria has said that husband Tony Parker strayed with a woman he kept in touch with on Facebook early in their marriage.

Indeed, real-life desperate housewives have discovered that opportunities to cheat aren’t sitting at the next barstool but a keystroke away.

Couples Led Astray

Marriage counselor Terry Real said he believes that Facebook can provide a sort of fantasy for a cheating spouse.

“There is nothing more seductive than the ‘one that got away’ fantasy is always better than someone who’s up to her eyeballs in bills and diapers,” he said.

The Rev. Cedric Miller, a pastor in New Jersey, made headlines recently when he called Facebook a “portal to infidelity” and told his parishioners to delete their accounts after 20 couples confessed that Facebook led them astray.

Miller himself took a leave of absence because of his own (non-Facebook) sexual transgressions. He later admitted to having a three-way sexual relationship in the past.

A connection is made and it starts out platonic and can later turn into something more. But such connections cannot solely be blamed on Facebook, therapists say.

“Before it was e-mail, then before that it was the phone,” Real said. “The problem is not Facebook, it is the loss of love in your marriage.”

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Suspicion, dishonesty, and fear of deception can overwhelm a person’s psyche. He even tells you that you’re crazy and have nothing to worry about, but your womanly intuitions say that this guy is a sneaky, cheating, little prick. She reassures that the handsome guy from work is just a friend, but you know men well enough to know that he is just trying to get a piece of your honey. Are your accusations spot on or are they slowly killing your relationship? Like a magicians secrets revealed, here are the tell tale signs that your partner is cheating….

7 Jealousy and Insecurity

You reap what you sow. Those who find the slightest suspicion in the most obscure places are usually guilty themselves.

6 Remnants of Another Person

You’ve seen those CSI shows, look for traces left behind i.e. hair, make-up, perfume, cologne, hair clips, bobby pins, socks, dishes. I’m no forensic scientist, but strands of hair that appear in your bed, car, or on your clothing that isn’t mine, is sketchy.

5 Disinterest, Distant, and Distracted

General disinterest in intimacy may mean that they are being fulfilled elsewhere. If your partner seems distant or distracted, they may have that other person on their mind.

4 Atypical Nitpicking

If you notice your partner starting arguments over issues that are out of the ordinary, chances are that they are looking for excuses to leave you by projecting their guilt from cheating on to you.

3 Emphasis on Social Life

Having a social life outside of your relationship is absolutely encouraged, but when that social life becomes repeatingly more important than spending alone time together then that separate social life turns into a separate secret life.

2 Unhappiness

If there are no severe issues in your relationship, and your partner isn’t happy, then somebody else is making them happy. Simple as that.

1 The Confidential Cellphone

If your partner conceals the content of their cellphone like they are a top-secret, international spy, then most likely there are hints of an extracurricular relationship within that phone. Your are not apart of the CIA, relax.

I know its difficult to distinguish between insecurity and legitimate acts of infidelity, but make sure you choose a side. Constantly badgering your partner with accusations and suspicion gets exhausting. Either you believe your partner 100% or get to steppin’. Life is too short for the inbetween. Trust issues are difficult to overcome; take a step back and assess if these suspicions are a result of your own jaded past or if your partner is a cheater, cheater, pumpkin eater. Take it or leave it.

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