Emotional situations bring out irrational statements, but word choices can still signal things like collusive knowledge, deception, or inconsistency worth investigating. And there are a few such signals in the publicized plea of Zenya Hernandez' televised appeal for the return of her missing daughter Abby, of North Conway, NH. (For a video clip of this appeal, see the last third of this news report: http://www.necn.com/10/12/13/Missing-North-Conway-NH-teens-mother-ple/landing.html?blockID=854999)
The mother begins with, "I want to say please come home. We miss you so badly. We want you back with us."
What 's wrong with this? In content analysis to detect deception, there is a truism that the shortest path to the point is the best and most likely to be truthful. Thus the introduction of extra, unnecessary words constitutes a red flag that deserves scrutiny. Instead of saying right out, "Come home," Zenya Hernandez started out with "I want to say." This dilutes what follows. Indicating what one "wants" to say is not quite the same as just coming out and saying it. It is as if the speaker acknowledges that a want does not always translate into a need or a reality. I want a tax-free inheritance from an unknown benefactor. This does not mean I expect it to happen. If I state that I want to say something, this opens the possibility that I want to say it but feel that I am not really saying it voluntarily. Similarly, we must ask whether Mrs. Hernandez is making this opening statement because it is expected of her, rather than an accurate representation of other thoughts she possesses.
More telling still is an immediate shift in pronouns, which is also revealing, The mother's reference to herself with the personal pronoun "I" starts and ends with announcing what she "wants" to say. Then she immediately shifts to the plural with "we." This could be revealing. What does she mean by we? Someone who forms part of that "we" probably does miss Abby and does want her back. The question is whether that intensity of feeling extends to the mother equally. It may be possible that there are some hard feelings between mother and daughter -- certainly nothing unexpected between parents and teens -- and that this relationship has colored the mother's statement, even if she is completely blameless and sincere in wanting to be reunited with her daughter. But it bears probing to learn whether the mother may be withholding some useful details about a recent argument or conflict that may have in some way influenced Abigail Hernandez's disappearance.
Towards the end of the video, one more snippet invites extra scrutiny. Specifically, in making the now standard appeal for anyone who knows something to share this information with authorities, what does Mrs. Hernandez say? She asks for anyone who "knew" Abby to come forward, not for anyone who "knows" her daughter. Changing tenses this way may be significant, a possible indicator that the mother is already thinking of the daughter in the past tense, too. What makes this a red flag? Susan Smith spoke in the past tense when making a plea for return of sons she knew were already dead.
None of these things amounts to a smoking gun. Stressful circumstances can produce different responses from different people. However, the foregoing anomalies do suggest that there may well be more to this story than investigators have received or communicated openly so far.
-- 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.