http://themaddiecasefiles.com/topic8129-160.html
beachy
 I remember the thread on 3A and am sure I probably participated in it, but it was someone else who began it with that cogent comment.

I am highly, highly suspicious of some of the statements from the tapas group. As Southernbelle pointed out, they cannot remember major points but their statements are replete with minor detail. (Gerry and Kate enjoyed a "New Zealand white" before leaving for the tapas, but he cannot remember for certain whether or not he locked the front door before leaving three children aged three and under alone in an apartment at night, out of sight and sound, near a public car park. Jesus wept.)

Decades ago I attended a course in interrogation at what was then known as the John Reid Institute in Chicago. (<!-- m -->http://www.reid.com/training_programs/r_training.html<!-- m -->) This is one of the things they taught us to look for: the odd bit of extraneous detail suddenly dropped down from nowhere in the middle of an ongoing narrative.

Of course people do odd things sometimes, but most people's attitude during an interrogation is that they just want to get through it and get it over. Generally speaking, the more often they digress, and the more detailed the stories become regarding minor points that have little or nothing to do with the main issue at hand nor the questions they are being asked, the more likely it is that they are, either consciously or subconsciously, trying to convince the interrogator of something. It's as if their minds are saying, "See all these lovely details I've provided. How can you possibly not believe me.?"

Interrogation was my long suit, and I got all the training in it that I could. On another occasion I attended an interrogation school that taught what was referred to as the "Israeli method." It consisted of going over the same ground, again and again and again, in the greatest detail imaginable. Then once you had finished, you'd go back and start all over and cover the same ground again. Between each session you'd compare the statements and pound the subject verbally over any inconsistencies.

There were two types of indications as to who was most likely to be lying: Those who wandered all over the place and could not keep their stories straight and blathered when confronted with contradictions, and those who repeated the details the same way, virtually verbatim, every time. On one occasion I was interrogating a man who repeated a complicated story almost word-for-word three times. The third time I had his statements read back to him, confronted him with the fact that they were almost identical, and told him I thought that his recollection was TOO prefect; someone had to have made it up and spoon fed it him. After a few minutes of that, he got very red in the face, half-rose from the table, pounded on it with his fists, and shouted, "NOBODY MADE THAT UP FOR ME!!! I MADE EVERY WORD OF IT UP MYSELF!!!!" Game over.

The Israeli method fell into disfavour after a few years and was no longer taught as an interrogation technique. I never knew why for sure but heard it was because, after being taken over and over the same facts time after time, some people were more successful at passing a polygraph. I always thought it was a pity, as it worked a treat for me many times.

I think the weakest link in this case is not the forensics - either the evidence can be found or it can't, and there's little help for that - but rather, the interviewing, on the part of both forces involved. I don't know, perhaps interrogation techniques are not emphasised these days as much as they used to be.