It is amazing what people will divulge if someone takes the time to get and keep them talking. The art in transforming conversation into investigative technique comes from guiding interviews to the point of facilitating admissions. This, in turn, requires creating opportunities for interviewees to reveal where they are being deceptive. This, in turn, requires the interviewing investigator to shut up. After all, as studies have shown, the average length of time it takes before a detective interrupts an interviewee is 8 seconds (Rebecca Milne & Ray Bull, 1988. Investigative Interviewing. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons).
Someone in Vancouver, Washington, must have taken the foregoing lessons to heart when local detectives announced yesterday that Bethany Storro threw acid on her own face on August 30, instead of being the victim of a random attacker. As details trickle out through the media, talk about splash patterns and a search of Ms. Storro’s residence may imply that forensic evidence broke the case. Perhaps. But the home search produced no acid, and deriving subtle indicators of deception from acid splash patterns in this case would be like driving around the block to arrive next door. It is much more likely that old fashioned, inquisitive interviewing and zeroing in on inconsistent statements gave Ms. Storro away. What might some of those questions and answers have looked like? (This is my speculation only.)
Q: If you had to theorize, who do you think might have done this?
A: Gee. I really don’t know. [Deceptive. The innocent tend to offer some names. The guilty or deceptive are more inclined not to.]
Q: What do you think should happen to the person who did this?
A: I don’t know. Maybe they need help. I don’t want revenge. [Deceptive. Storro did advance an avowed, Christian message along the lines of not seeking revenge. The innocent tend to name a harsh punishment. The guilty don’t because this question in effect makes them answer how they feel they should themselves be punished.]
Q: Do you think the person who did this should have a second chance, or rehabilitation?
A: Yes. [Deceptive. Same rationale as above. The innocent stick to harsh punishment.]
Other revealing signs include how Storro structured her story. In a true statement, emotions appear in illogical places because this is how the truthful person remembers them happening. In a deceptive story, every detail supports the narrative and is rehearsed. Thus, Ms. Storro’s initial story most likely suffered from appearing too logical, too tidy. Additionally, most deceptive accounts of events devote an inordinate amount of time to setting the stage and building up to the incident itself. True stories have the bulk of the narrative concentrating on the incident itself with a modest preamble and a modest conclusion.
All a detective or private sector investigator has to do is look, if he or she wants training on how to detect deception. Avinoam Sapir’s Scientific Content Analysis (SCAN) technique is absolutely first-rate for unearthing deception in statements a subject makes, whether in print or in broadcast interviews. Mr. Sapir no doubt would have discerned multiple red flags in the way Ms. Storro talked about the incident from her hospital bed when she got her first exposure to media attention. Wasn’t it interesting, he might have wondered, that she made such a show of Christian forbearance in not seeking out harsh treatment for her alleged attacker? Another handy addition to the investigator’s tool kit would be the Wicklander-Zulawski method of interviewing to detect deception. Indeed, this W-Z technique inspired my foregoing questions and answers.
None of this works, however, if the process excludes the fundamental necessity: an investigator with an inquisitive nature. It takes an inquiring mind to wonder why a woman who claims she never wears sunglasses was wearing them at 7:15 p.m. in the shadow of a city building just in time to mitigate the so-called random acid attack. Well done, Vancouver detectives.
-- Nick Catrantzos
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Nick Catrantzos + Tom Goff
- All Secure
- NICK CATRANTZOS is the lead author of the All Secure website and is the emeritus security director for a large public organization. He has also managed security aspects of corporate takeovers, response to international hostage situations, and finding and keeping secrets. He has been board certified in security management, licensed as a private investigator, and certified as an incident commander. He worked as a case officer for a discreet branch of public service. He protected stealth technology at Lockheed and, later, as a consulting security director for both Kroll and Control Risks, he assisted executives with workplace violence cases and with protecting VIPs and critical assets globally in volatile areas. Nick's partner, TOM GOFF, was a captain in the Military Police Corps, U.S. Army Reserve and has a law degree from the University of California at Davis. He is a former reporter for Fortune Magazine, was senior editor at New York Magazine and Esquire, and has provided crisis and communications counsel to senior executives at Fortune 500 companies, including Lockheed, ARCO, Microsoft, Nissan, and Sony Pictures.