“Being street smart and staying one step ahead is key in successful domestic investigations,” said Wesley Wilder, owner of Macks Pickett Investigative Services.
The bulk of the company’s 700 cases a year are domestic investigations. “We provide a wide variety of investigative needs for family law matters, including child custody, infidelity and cohabitation issues.”
Macks Pickett Investigative Services is hired by family and divorce law firms of all sizes across the state. The firm is sometimes retained by an individual spouse or parent to investigate the other spouse to determine if there are sufficient grounds to hire a lawyer. Investigators can follow cases out of state if they are initiated in North Carolina.
Efficient and Discreet
“We provide our clients with a discreet and effective way to get evidence through our experience, technology, and surveillance,” said Wilder. “The company refuses to engage in any illegal activity during the course of an investigation, such as entrapment.”
Former Wake County Sheriff’s Department Captain Macks Pickett launched Macks Pickett Investigative Services 27 years ago. The core of the business was, and still is, family law cases. After working with Macks Pickett directly for the past 12 years, Wilder bought the company one year ago. Pickett remains involved in the business.
The company has 17 licensed in-office or field investigators across the state, most of whom have law enforcement backgrounds, ranging from local police, sheriff, state police to the CIA. They’ve all been certified by the Private Protective Services Board, which is overseen by the NC Department of Public Safety.
Dangerous Liaisons
The company’s investigators bring an added level of expertise to their cases because most of their investigations are domestic matters. “Because of our experience with these kinds of cases, we can anticipate or speculate so we can stay one step ahead of the next move that the person we are following is going to make,” explained Wilder.
“If we see a couple pull into a hotel parking lot, we won’t just sit in the car. We want to get out and beat them inside that lobby. When they come walking in with their luggage, we want to get on that elevator ride with them, we want to let them get off the elevator, walk down the hall, then we will get a picture of them walking into that room together.”
One More For the Road
Wilder said a significant part of its business is investigating child custody cases, which sometimes involve illegal activity like buying or selling drugs, substance abuse or drinking obsessive amounts of alcohol and driving while impaired.
“Let’s say a parent takes their kids into the bar and has several drinks, then gets into their car. We want to get out in the parking lot and watch her put their kids in the back seat of the car and have that proof on video,” said Wilder.
“We have a lot of experience with the attorneys, and we know what the courts are looking for, so we know what to do when we get a phone call from an attorney. Lawyers use private investigators because their reports are admissible in court.”
“We give the client and the attorney a summary of the investigation. We give them a timeline report of every time and every day that the investigators were out in the field. We give them photos and surveillance videos that have been recovered from the case and GPS tracking data collected throughout the course of the investigation.”
Confidentiality
“Is this confidential?” is a common question asked by potential new clients. “Confidentiality and private investigation go hand in hand,” said Pickett. “We adhere to the same standards as a law firm. If someone from our company talks about a case in public, it’s going to ruin the case, it’s going to ruin our reputation, and possibly result in a lawsuit. In all the years that the company has been in business we’ve never had a single complaint about something getting out of the office.”
