Keller detective left 55 cases unworked, including child sex assault, internal probe reveals
For years, dozens of police reports filed with the Keller Police Department went nowhere, and nobody noticed until an internal audit in January 2025.
According to Keller Police Chief Brad Fortune, it is standard practice that when a new lieutenant joins the department's Criminal Investigations Division, they take an accounting of all cases. That's how the department learned that 55 cases filed from 2019 to 2022 were sitting open and unworked. All of them had been assigned to Michael Riehle, a detective who was promoted out of CID in 2022.
Fortune said at that time, caseloads were high, so when Riehle left CID, he kept some cases with him. The idea was that he would work them when he had time. Records showed that never happened.
Of the 55 unworked cases, 16 had to be closed because the statute of limitations had passed. In 23 cases, Riehle never made contact with the victims, the department said.
Inaction led to new victims
As the department opened an internal investigation into Riehle, other detectives were assigned the open cases, including one about a little girl.
"Initially, there was a female child who was sexually assaulted when she was very young, approximately 7," Fortune said. "Couple years after that is when she outcried to her parents, to her biological mom and stepdad. And that's when they reported it to us, so she was 9."
Fortune said Riehle interviewed the girl and her mother in October 2020. There are no records of anything being done on the case after that.
This year, another detective took over the case and identified a suspect. In May, police arrested Clintin Mosley for sexual performance of a child. According to the department's internal investigation, Mosley's was one of two cases in which "subsequent investigative efforts identified new victims who were assaulted after Sergeant Riehle's initial cases had been opened but left unresolved."
"Had Sergeant Riehle appropriately investigated and closed his original cases, it is likely that these additional offenses, and the harm to new victims, could have been prevented," the investigation report said.
The I-Team interviewed a Lampasas County woman who said her daughters are victims of Mosley. She said she met him in 2022, two years after he was first reported to Keller PD. She considered him a family friend until this year.
The woman requested to remain anonymous to protect her daughters' identities.
"I was scrolling through Facebook and I saw a post of another mom saying, 'If you know this person, don't trust him. If you've ever left your kids with him alone, you need to talk to them,'" the woman said.
That's when she started asking her own daughters about the man they considered a "fun uncle." She said Mosley had sexually abused her 10-year-old and taken inappropriate photos of her 8-year-old.
"I feel sad for all the kids that are affected," she said.
Mosley is now facing charges related to child sex assault and child pornography in Lampasas County. As of this report, he had not entered a plea in either case and his attorney declined to comment.
The detective's explanation
In a memo to the chief in March, Riehle gave several reasons for the lack of follow-up, including uncertainty on how to close complicated investigations and challenges contacting people during the pandemic.
In the last paragraph he wrote, "I do want you to know that, at no time since leaving CID, have I chosen to forget my still-active caseload. It has weighed on me, knowing it isn't going away; I've just been hoping I'd manage to find time to give them their due attention. I have never intended to shirk this responsibility. I never tried to keep this a secret and there were even some who suggested that I simply close all of my open cases and just be done; no one would know. I know it's of little consolation, but I really did mean to properly finish all of them."
In May, at the conclusion of the internal investigation, Fortune decided to fire Riehle. "There's no way I could move forward with what had happened and allow him to continue to be a part of the Keller Police Department," Fortune said.
Ultimately, Riehle was allowed to resign instead. He now works at the Northlake Police Department. When asked about his decision to hire Riehle, NPD Chief Robert Crawford sent us the following statement:
"The Northlake Police Department completed a full background check on Mr. Riehle following TCOLE standards. We reviewed his tenure at the Keller Police Department as a whole and based his hiring on the totality of his 16 years of service and experience."
Riehle did not reply to our request for comment.
Chief makes changes
Fortune admitted the situation exposed problems with the "specificity" of case updates. While he had already implemented weekly case updates, now supervisors are also expected to report on high-profile investigations and the oldest case of each detective.
The department also added two new audits each year, and a detailed plan of what happens to a detective's cases when he or she leaves CID.
Fortune said he is determined to make sure that no case falls through the cracks ever again.
"We have a responsibility to the citizens of Keller and all residents around us that we protect them," he said. "They have a faith in us that we are going to do what's right, within our power, to provide justice. And it absolutely was not done."