Madison police spent two weeks pursuing a bogus lead in the investigation into Brittany Zimmermann's slaying because of bad information from the Dane County 911 center, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk said Tuesday.

Falk also said the 911 center can't determine whether a dispatcher hung up on a call from Zimmermann's cell phone on April 2, the day she was killed, or the caller disconnected it. Center director Joe Norwick last week said the dispatcher hung up the phone after hearing nothing on the line, though Madison police say there were sounds that should have led the operator to dispatch police.

Falk also told reporters that Norwick on Friday gave her a 40-page report on the incident, but she was told it couldn't be released to the public because it would threaten the integrity of the police investigation into Zimmermann's slaying.

Falk said she's asked Norwick to contact a professional association, the Association of Public Safety Communications Officials, to review the incident and the center's general performance.

The dispatcher had two other calls waiting and forgot to place a return call to Zimmermann's cell phone, as 911 center protocols require, Falk said.

What officials didn't say until today was that shortly after the incident the 911 center erroneously told Madison police the dispatcher called Zimmermann's cell phone back and reached two males. That led police to believe the two male voices were on Zimmermann's phone.

Almost two weeks later, the 911 center reviewed telephone company logs for that day and discovered there were two different calls, and the dispatcher had actually reached the two men while calling back on a hang-up call from another phone that came in after the one from Zimmermann's.

The two males who answered told the dispatcher the hang-up call was a mistake.

"In the initial stage of the investigation, 911 officials told Madison investigators inaccurately that the call back to the two males had gone to Ms. Zimmermann's phone," Falk said.

"The police were extremely interested in finding the two male respondents and focused some investigative efforts on that call back and the two males. ... We now know this second call had no connection to the first call."

Police did not learn until April 15 that the two males were never on Zimmermann's phone, only discovering the fact after the 911 center reviewed telephone company logs.

Details not released

Falk repeated several times that Madison police instructed her not to reveal any details about the noises in the call, its length or the time it was received.

Falk did distribute a summary of portions of Norwick's report, in which the 911 center acknowledged the call from Zimmermann's cell phone could have been pinpointed to 511 W. Doty Street, a 24-unit apartment building next to her apartment house.

Norwick told reporters last week that the reason police weren't automatically dispatched to hang-ups from cell phones was because the location of the call could not be sufficiently pinpointed.

Falk said Friday there is no "foolproof ability" to pinpoint the location of a cellular call — it "may often be fairly precise but can on occasion range anywhere within a few miles of the actual caller."

Falk said Tuesday she didn't agree with many of Norwick's statements to the press last week and that he "clearly misspoke," but she said she continued to have confidence in his ability to run the 911 center.

"I am not going to fire Joe Norwick," Falk said. "I am not intending to discipline Joe Norwick. 911 staff made those errors. ... This situation is clearly extremely rare."

Falk's chief of staff Topf Wells later said, " I think if (Norwick) had to do (the press conference) over again, he would say different things."

Call probe continues

The dispatcher who handled the calls — a civil service employee and a union member — is working in another county department while a disciplinary investigation is continuing, Wells said Friday.

Contrary to previous statements from Falk's office, the dispatcher, a 20-year veteran of the 911 center, had asked for a transfer from the 911 center in March, several weeks prior to the April 2, Wells confirmed Tuesday. The transfer was granted shortly after the April 2 incident, Wells said.

Falk said the mistakes had nothing to do with a lack of sufficient 911 center staff or other distractions around the dispatcher, though she said she did not know whether the dispatcher had been working an overtime shift.

"It is not useful to armchair quarterback after a tragedy," Falk said, "but knowing what we know now about that call, the dispatcher made a mistake."

Call back policy

Falk said the center's technology is unable to determine who ended the call from Zimmermann's phone the day she was slain. However, Norwick said last week that the dispatcher hung up. "It was (Norwick's) understanding of the technology at the time," Falk said in his defense Friday.

The policy of the 911 center is to call back to any cell phone caller who is disconnected or can't be understood. The dispatcher who took the call from Zimmermann's phone intended to return it, but got busy with other calls and forgot, Norwick said.

Zimmermann's body was found in her apartment on West Doty Street in the middle of the day, not long after she returned home from class. Someone forced entry into her building, and she died of "a complexity of traumatic injuries," the coroner said. An official familiar with the investigation said she was stabbed.

Details in report

Falk's summary from Norwick's 40-page report detailed the following:

• When the call from Zimmermann's cell phone came in, the 911 dispatcher asked three questions, pausing to listen, before the call ended.

• There were sounds in the call that should have alerted the dispatcher to the call's significance, but the dispatcher didn't hear them.

• The dispatcher could have initiated a search with Zimmermann's cell phone company. That usually takes between five and 30 minutes and could link the name of the subscriber to the billing address.

Despite the county not following the recommendations of a 2004 report that determined immediate staff increases were needed for the center to keep up with the increasing number of calls, Falk again insisted the 911 center is not understaffed. "I have no data or information that tells me we are understaffing the 911 center," she said.

If a subsequent audit finds that the center does need more staff, "no one's to blame," Falk said. "There is no blame to lay."