Retired Missouri detective says he's too sick to testify at murder trials. Now they're falling...

In St. Louis, murder investigations often rely on a single detective, making them vulnerable if the detective is unable or unwilling to come to court. But a former homicide investigator said he has no obligation to cooperate, claiming that “retirement is meant to be retirement.”

Prosecutors routinely find ways to get key detectives to testify in criminal trials, even when they are retired, sick or otherwise reluctant. Some fly retirees in from Florida or other retirement locales when necessary. Others have said they use subpoenas to force detectives to take the witness stand.

But prosecutors in the St. Louis circuit attorney’s office have been unable to get retired homicide detective Thomas W. Mayer Sr. into a courtroom, even though some of the cases Mayer investigated involved the murders of children — the sort of high-profile cases cops say they especially want to win.

Over the past two years, Mayer has told prosecutors he is unable to testify against two men he arrested after the fatal shooting of an unarmed teenager; those cases crumbled. Prosecutors said he told them he’s not available to testify in the case against a teen accused of driving a car from which at least one passenger allegedly shot another teen who was in his own vehicle. And court records say Mayer has been unavailable to testify against a teen charged with the murder of a 9-year-old boy shot while riding in his family’s SUV while they were delivering food to his grandmother.

Mayer, who served as the Missouri president of the Fraternal Order of Police from 1998 to 2006, contends retired police officers should not be expected to testify, because “retirement is meant to be retirement.” And he said his doctor told him he’s too sick to testify, though it’s not the first time Mayer has claimed illness has prevented him from carrying out his duties — and not the first time those claims have been questioned.