Team of private investigators hired by Spierer family

The Spierer family has hired a private investigative team to find information about the disappearance of their daughter, missing IU student Lauren Spierer, the lead private investigator said Friday.

Richard Alfredo “Bo” Dietl appeared on “Good Day New York” on Friday to talk about the case. In the interview, he criticized Bloomington Police Department Chief of Police Michael Diekhoff and what he described as the pervasive drug culture among IU students.

Dietl compared college students to zombies in the film “Night of the Living Dead,” adding that pill usage is rampant at universities.  

“The drug usage on this college campus has a direct effect, I believe, to her being missing at this time,” Dietl said in the interview.

Dietl, a retired New York City police officer, said he and a team of other retired New York police officers have been involved in the case “for some time now.”

His team includes four private investigators whom Dietl said are currently in Bloomington investigating the case.

“They’ve uncovered stuff that really is giving us a direction on this case,” he said. “We have a lot of information.”

Dietl said the information will be turned over to the Monroe County prosecutor’s office in due course.

But Dietl said BPD seems to be overmatched with the Lauren Spierer case.

He did not have kind words to say about BPD Chief of Police Diekhoff, whom he referred to as “Gomer Pyle,” a character from “The Andy Griffith Show.” Pyle was an auto mechanic on the show who sometimes served as a naive and incompetent police
officer.

“I met with the chief, and all I can say is, thank God for New York detectives,” Dietl said. He went on to say Diekhoff hardly said anything in response and seemed to stumble over the little bit that he did say in the meeting.

“Bo, you may have to do business with this guy going forward,” host Rosanna Scotto reminded the investigator.

But Dietl said he wasn’t concerned with that because his main goal is to “find that little girl.”

He said any information his team finds will be turned over to the police.

Dietl is a frequent Fox News commentator who is famous for his sometimes bombastic statements to the press.

At the beginning of the Wikileaks scandal, for example, he publicly called for the assassination of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Dietl also ran for Congress in 1986 as a Republican and has appeared in films and television programs.

Chief Diekhoff was unavailable for comment Sunday.

— Zach Ammerman