Private investigator linked to owner of escort service

Documents obtained by the Deseret News show that a private investigator who tailed the Salt Lake County district attorney worked in tandem with a man accused of running a prostitution ring.

The documents indicate ties between several players in the controversy surrounding District Attorney Lohra Miller and her decision to fire a longtime prosecutor for allegedly leaking confidential information to a criminal defendant. The documents show:

• The private investigator, Shane Johnson, jointly obtained documents with the defendant accused of leading a prostitution ring, Steve Maese, about the police chief who headed the probe into Maese's former escort service.

• Johnson works for Todd Gabler, a Springdale-based private investigator who was hired by an unnamed client to investigate Miller's private life and then continued to investigate her on his own after his "client could no longer pay for (his) services."

• Maese is the man to whom Miller believes former veteran prosecutor Kent Morgan was leaking secret information.

The documents obtained by the Deseret News through public-records requests show that Johnson, who spent weeks casing Miller's home and following her to private clubs, jointly obtained audio recordings of a City Council meeting with Maese, who is scheduled to go on trial this summer for several counts of exploiting a prostitute, money laundering and racketeering.

The May 2007 City Council meeting included a presentation by Lt. Robby Russo about a controversial move to use sheriff's deputies to provide security at a golf tournament. At the time, Russo was the highest ranked over Cottonwood Heights for the sheriff's office, and now serves as chief of the city's new police force.

Gabler, Johnson's boss, recently revealed that his firm tailed Miller's vehicles, rifled through her trash, videotaped her home and placed a GPS tracking device on her car — all actions Gabler insists are legal and in no way an invasion of the district attorney's privacy.

Gabler wouldn't confirm that Johnson works for him — "That information would be considered proprietary," he said — but documents obtained by the newspaper show that Johnson cased Miller's home and followed her cars in December 2007 and January 2008 and filed a report under the letterhead of Rudiger Investigations, a company that Gabler is listed as the registered agent with for the Utah Department of Commerce.