| abstract | - Francis "Frankie" Sheehan (d. April 1999) was a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department's Robbery-Homicide Division, and a former partner of detective Harry Bosch. He was the estranged husband of Margaret Sheehan. He was a hard-core baseball fan who enjoyed visiting the grave of Casey Stengel at Forest Lawn. On 25 December 1992, he and IAD detective John Chastain were assigned to investigate the death of Narcotics detective Calexico Moore. In 1993, Sheehan publicly threatened civil rights attorney Howard Elias, telling the lawyer that someday, someone would sneak up behind him and put him down like a dog. In November of that year, Sheehan worked with Bosch, Hans Rollenberger, and Irvin Irving in pursuit of a recently-revealed killer whose murders had previously been creditted to the Dollmaker. In June of 1998, Sheehan investigated the disappearance and murder of Stacey Kincaid, in the process of which he arrested Michael Harris. Sheehan questioned Harris for three days, and when Harris refused to confess, Sheehan and three other homicide detectives beat him, placed a plastic bag over his head, and punctured his eardrum with a Black Warrior #2 pencil. Harris was later acquitted of the murder, and he filed a police brutality case against Sheehan and 14 other officers. In April of 1999, Sheehan was called to the scene of the murder of Howard Elias, who was representing Harris in the police brutality suit against the LAPD. Sheehan, and all of RHD, was taken off the case because of extensive past conflicts with Elias. Sheehan became a suspect in the Elias murder when John Chastain sumbitted bullets from an older case for ballistics analysis in the Elias case in order to frame Sheehan. He was questioned by FBI agent Roy Lindell, but was released at Harry Bosch's insistence. When they were partners in RHD, Bosch had always known Sheehan as a good and honest cop. There was a case from that time in which Sheehand could have justifiably shot a carjacker. Instead, Sheehan talked the man into surrendering. However, in later years Sheehan had changed. He confessed to Bosch that Harris had, in fact, been brutalized as stated in his lawsuit, but Bosch kept this information to himself. The news that a LAPD detective was a suspect in the murder of Elias was not unexpected, but it led to several days of protests and rioting. Sheehan was later murdered by Chastain with a gunshot to the head while Sheehan sat on the balcony of Bosch's house in the Hollywood Hills, arranging the body to look like a suicide. Although Bosch obtained proof that the ballistics analysis was false and Chastain was the real killer, the LAPD chose to portray Sheehan as the killer in order to restore peace to the city.
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