Ken Chastain was the husband of Shelby Chastain, son of John Chastain, and a detective in the LAPD Homicide Special branch of Robbery-Homicide. He followed in his father's footsteps by joining the department and worked his way up through the ranks. He was thorough and diligent in his approach to crime solving, staying up to date on the latest methods and technologies. He was also ambitious and therefore not inclined to challenge the status quo of the department. From 2009 to 2015 he was partnered with Reneé Ballard in RHD.
While working on a case in 2015 he learned of a new process called Vacuum Metal Deposition (VMD) for recovering fingerprints from porous surfaces. He contacted Eric Higgs, a chemistry professor at the University of California Irvine campus and recognized authority on the subject. Higgs ran the VMD process on a basketball, but no useable prints were recovered.
Two years later, while responding to five murders at the Dancers nightclub, he found a button at the scene which he recognized as coming from a police-style holster. He contacted Higgs again, and this time Higgs was able to recover a clear print. It was the thumbprint of Rogers Carr, a detective in LAPD's Major Crimes Unit. Because this made a fellow officer a suspect in the murders, Chastain did not run all of his evidence through normal channels, and he left a clue for Ballard to follow in case anything happened to him. He also received a call from a young man named Matthew Robison who was a witness to Carr's presence in the club on the night of the shooting. To protect this witness, Chastain stashed him in the Mark Twain Hotel.
Roughly 24 hours after the shooting at Dancers, Chastain was shot and killed at his home.
Appearances
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- The Late Show
