The Murder Police Podcast
The Murder Police Podcast
Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire! Part 3 of 4
The human body betrays what the mind tries to conceal. From ancient Chinese techniques using rice to detect lies to modern statement analysis methods, our conversation with Eddie Pearson reveals the fascinating science behind deception detection.
When someone lies, their brain experiences increased cognitive load – the mental strain of fabricating details while suppressing truth. This triggers physiological responses impossible to control: dry mouth, changed blinking patterns, and subtle shifts in posture. These involuntary reactions have provided the foundation for lie detection throughout human history.
Pearson shares powerful interrogation techniques that leverage these responses. The strategic use of silence forces suspects to fill uncomfortable voids, often revealing more than they intended. Language analysis provides equally compelling insights – shifts in verb tense during narratives, dropped personal pronouns, and words ending in "-ly" often signal deception. Even the choice between articles ("a" versus "the") can reveal someone's true familiarity with people or situations they claim not to know.
"The first person to speak after a question is the person who loses," Pearson notes, highlighting how patience becomes a powerful tool in uncovering truth. Through case examples, including a hit-and-run investigation where a single word ("directly") unlocked crucial information, we explore how these techniques have solved real crimes and revealed hidden truths.
Whether you're fascinated by criminal psychology, communication science, or simply interested in understanding human behavior better, this episode offers rare insights into how our words and bodies reveal what we try to hide. Subscribe now to hear the next installment in our series with Eddie Pearson, where we'll continue exploring the science of detecting deception.
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A thousand years ago, the Chinese used to put rice in people's mouth and they would ask them a question, and then they would have them spit the rice out. Well, if the rice was dry, they were lying.
Speaker 2:Stick to their mouth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they were lying, but if it was moist, then they were telling the truth.
Speaker 2:Liar Liar Pants on Fire. Body Language and Statement Analysis with Eddie Pearson, part 3 of 4. With Eddie Pearson, part three of four. Warning the podcast you're about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder and adult language.
Speaker 3:Listener discretion is advised talking about that cognitive load winning. I think that's why I hit on that minuscule smoke screen. Is that what I saw is that if they ran too hard, they're reducing that load. That way. And they get a lot of comfort because they're telling really solid truths in that moment.
Speaker 1:Cause they'll shut down. That's it. That's it.
Speaker 3:So as soon as you said that about the cognitive load, I was like you could feel that that they were getting more comfortable from that, and I think that's why it's important to bring them in. But providing is a big deal.
Speaker 2:What do you say instead of I understand. I don't say anything, you just say nothing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't say anything, just let it go. There's a technique out there called elicitation, and I use this on my wife a couple times, just to hope she's not listening.
Speaker 2:That poor lady, I'm totally calling her.
Speaker 1:She probably uses it on me. I just aren't smart enough to pick it up right. So elicitation is basically you make a statement, it's how some of our government agencies recruit foreign spies. You make a statement and you just let the statement go Like I'm sick of this rain. Don't say anything else If you're in a conversation with somebody, like I'm sick of this rain, I'm tired of mowing my grass. My grass is growing like a. I've got so many weeds because of this rain and just stop talking. My wife sent me a text. We went to go to lunch and she sent me a text the other day and I was having this conversation with somebody in my office. So she texts me and says that she's going to come by and pick me up and I said okay, just text me when you get to my office. So I'm having this conversation with this detective and about the time my wife texted me and I said watch, I'll show you how this works. She said I'm here. That was the text she sent me and I said I'm here.
Speaker 1:And I just repeated what she said, and put a question mark behind it. She said, Eddie, that's my point. You stop saying that they will give you more information. It's called elicitation. It works wonders. If you tried an interview, it works great. So when I teach, I teach a lot of elicitation techniques. I say just use them. The worst thing that's going to happen is nothing. They're not going to say anything. And silence is golden. They say when you ask someone a question, the first person to speak is the person who loses. So if you ask someone, you know, did you steal that watch from Walmart or Kmart or wherever it's at? You know, did you steal that watch from that retail store? And just stop talking? Yeah, and if they don't say anything, are you the kind of person that would do this? And you just keep asking them questions and they're just sitting there. You're losing, Don't say nothing.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And one of the hardest things to do is get detectives to stop talking. That's hard to do.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you need them to fill the void because they will, they will. It may take longer than you and I are thinking that we want it to, but I agree with you they have to be the first one that fills the void.
Speaker 1:If I ask you a question and I stop talking, five seconds to me, maybe 20 seconds to you, yeah, and I got to say something.
Speaker 2:I think it's just that awkward pause. I was sitting here thinking while you said that and I went to one of my centers Thursday and I've walked in and a little girl she's four and somehow they start talking about their dogs and their my mom's name's this, and so I've said what my mom's name was and somehow a dog gets brought up and I said, well, I played with my dog this morning. I'm trying to insert myself in the conversation with these kids, and she just looks at me and she goes okay, and I was like this is so awkward.
Speaker 2:I looked at the teacher and I'm like so awkward, so you got like she just said okay, and I was just like thinking I guess I was expecting her to ask me more questions.
Speaker 3:So you got blown by a four-year-old.
Speaker 2:By a four-year-old. I said well, I played with my dog and we played Frisbee and she goes, okay. I said wow, this is really awkward.
Speaker 3:I just walked off from the kid, but that's a good example of what happens in here.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you're just like wow, I don't even know what to say now, Because I think on the other side.
Speaker 3:What they're thinking is if I don't talk, I'm going to look like I'm lying.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's it and there's that cognitive load. I got to explain this.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I can't let this sit.
Speaker 1:So yeah, so it works wonders. I tell everybody. I said use it, it works. The body language cues everybody. I said listen, just go on YouTube. There's all kinds of information on YouTube. There's tons of books out there. Read, read, read, read, read. I constantly read research papers. I get on Google Scholar. I read all these research papers on body language.
Speaker 1:Body language has been around since basically the beginning of time. We all have children and how do you communicate with your children before they start talking body language? When I was out here last time, we was looking at George the horse and I was asking David. I said why does George stand with his foot like up his hoof up like that? And so he explained it to me. Well, he knows that because of George's body language. Now he may be able to talk to George. I don't know. But if George came walking across the field, david could probably say he's not feeling good because I can recognize his body language.
Speaker 1:Well, our kids are the same way. If your kids go to school and they're walking up the driveway, you can look out the window. If they don't realize you're watching them, it's like, well, you had a bad day at school. Shoulders are sloped down and that's a good point. Speaking of shoulders, a lot of times when you interview people you want to look at the distance between the earlobe and the shoulder, whatever that distance is. When that distance closes, when it gets smaller, that's a, that's an indicator. When people shrug their shoulders, they'll get tense.
Speaker 2:It's so funny. You said that because the other night I was on my Peloton and the girl says we're starting to get ready to ride. She says do some neck rolls. She says, move your shoulders from your ears.
Speaker 2:And I'm like, oh, elongate your spine and pull your shoulders from your ears and then I was like wow, they were up there. I was just squatted down. But you know, it's so funny, you were talking about the communication. All I could think is texting my son, who's 17, and I'll send these little inspirationals, as I know the life 360 tells me he's at school and I'll say have a great day. You know, really focus on your test that you're going to take. You're going to do great today and I love you and you get back okay. Yeah, I'm like wow, yeah it's, it's like that's also.
Speaker 3:I think it's jasper I think it's generational.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's. Yeah, he probably knows.
Speaker 3:It's just like okay, kids yeah, jasper knows how to push your buttons better than you know that's kids yeah if a four-year-old can get you, you're 17 oh my gosh you've been hit by a car you've been hit by a car.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, when your kids are in my son did this when he's, when he first starts school, you know you take him to school and he gives you a big hug and he's you know, I'm going to school and he has a great day. And then when he gets about nine, he gives you that side hug thing and you're like and then when he gets a little older, you're like oh, I don't need a hug, I'm good, it's high school is like drop me off two blocks away.
Speaker 3:Yeah, drop, I don't want anybody to see me with you this is BS.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's kids. Stranger danger right, yeah, but you know, during an interview or an interrogation I look at the shoulders. You'll see those shoulders tense up and I've seen those shoulders tense up and people will like put their legs up and put their feet in a chair and they're like in a fetal position.
Speaker 3:Yes, yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm like what's—? Oh, you need to unwind there, yeah, and then what you got to do is you got to get them to loosen up and open up and, like I said before, when you start talking about their emotional drivers their kids, their family, their education, their business, their career, whatever and you start talking about that I remember interviewing, it just jumped into my head. I interviewed a lady one time. That was a what do they call it? A handwriting.
Speaker 3:Oh, what is that? I know it's handwriting analysis. Calligraphy, calligraphy, here we go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I couldn't think of the name of the word. She was a calligraphist and I had never heard the word calligraphist. I was like, what is that? She said, you know handwriting. I was like, oh really, how does that work? And we talked like 40 minutes on her career and I got very well educated, sure.
Speaker 1:And so as I'm doing this, I kind of lost myself and she's kind of teaching me. I'm not paying attention to her body language, but her body language opened up and she's telling me this, and so at some point I'm like, oh, I've got to kind of get the train back on the track here. We need to talk about this. But I'm noticing her body language.
Speaker 1:But I got a great education from her and she relaxed and told me everything she knew, all the training that she'd had and the universities that she had went to, and she'd worked this and done this and done that for this bank and she was one of the forensics people that do like check, kiting and forgery and she did that kind of stuff and she was accused of doing a bunch of other stuff and forgery. And she did that kind of stuff and she was accused of doing a bunch of other stuff. But then I kind of said, oh, I need to get back on track here because she's giving me an education but I'm not washing her body language because I got all this other stuff in my brain and so um. But then then, once I had that rapport built and and I had that baseline of what her body language was, then I could go back and look for those changes and shifts. But, like David was saying earlier, it's just so much information that's coming at you and you miss. Sometimes you miss it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 1:So let me change just a little bit and talk about statement analysis. Statement analysis has been around since forever. Pretty much In the late 60s is when it kind of really started getting some momentum, some speed. I don't do handwriting analysis. We generally don't take handwritten statements from people. Some detectives do. I don't do it, but my statement analysis is kind of on the fly as I'm speaking with them.
Speaker 1:So when someone is talking to you about statement analysis, it's basically analyzing the words that people are saying and how they're saying them. For instance, if you're asking someone about tell me what happened during the car wreck, everything they tell you about the collision will be in past tense because it's already happened, right, and so one of the clues that someone's being deceptive when it comes to statement analysis is they start changing the tense from past tense to present tense. The present tense is the part that they're making up. For instance, I interviewed a lady one time that was accused of stealing a night deposit from her business. They would give her the night deposit. She would take it to the bank and drop it in the night deposit box at the bank. Remember, I don't think they do that anymore, but it used to be like a big mailbox arm thing.
Speaker 1:You put it in and close it right. Well, she pulled up and then somebody came up to her, pointed a gun at her, stole the bag and took off running. Well, when I'm asking her this and we're interviewing her and I'm telling her tell me the route you took, tell me this, tell me. Everything she's telling me is in past tense, but the part about this guy opening the door and pointing the gun at her, she changes to present tense.
Speaker 1:He opens the door not opened the door Right, she changed to present tense and then he ran off and this is the way he ran past tense. So I was like, eh, this is a problem, yeah. So we went back and I talked to her about it and she eventually said it was her boyfriend. They had set it up. He met her there, she gave him the money, she called the police and said she was robbed and she wasn't. It was her boyfriend. But the only way I found that they could figure that out is because she changed the tense of what she was talking about Interesting.
Speaker 1:So it's very hard, it's very subtle, but you can pick up on it. I listen for articles A and D. A car approached, a man got out, pointed a gun at me and demanded my wallet. If someone makes that statement versus the car approached, the man got out, pointed the gun at me and demanded my wallet. The only two differences is the article A and D. If someone says a man, a car, a gun, they probably don't know the man, the car or the gun, probably never seen them before. But if they say the man, they know who he is, they've seen him before. The car, the gun, they know. They have some more information about it, all right. So a lot of times people say, well, the bartender threw me out of the bar versus a bartender. Well, they know who the bartender is because they've been in the bar drinking.
Speaker 3:Yeah, good idea.
Speaker 1:So you kind of listen for that, listen for those article changes. A lot of times you'll hear people that are being deceptive. They'll drop pronouns. I'll say Wendy, what time did you get up this morning? Tell me everything that happened from 5 o'clock this morning until noon Got up at 5 o'clock, took a shower, washed my hair, ate breakfast, got in the car, went to work. Didn't use one personal pronoun. I got up at five o'clock. I washed my hair. When people use the word I, we us them. They're taking possession of it.
Speaker 1:Kind of owning that, yeah, they take possession of it. So a lot of times what people do is, when they're deceptive, they will drop those personal pronouns. That way it doesn't tie them to the action. There we go.
Speaker 2:well, you'll see them have a dissonance, right, yeah, I think people need to learn how to lie better, maybe after this said no, they don't, no, they don't, no, no it makes our job. You're giving away all the secrets, I feel like but can I say something?
Speaker 3:and you know, sometimes I think about that and even on the show, sometimes there's things we don't talk about in specifics because I don't want to arm people. But I will say this, just like you said, you had people sit the right way, right and they can know, and it's subconscious and it's physiological and it's part of our amygdala, it's part of our limbic system. They can. I'm going to tell you, people can know everything he's saying.
Speaker 2:I think he's so subconscious you just still do it anyway, and I think most of our audience probably won't be in an interview room.
Speaker 3:I'm just going to give them props for that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, let's hope not.
Speaker 3:And if you're tuning in for the other thing, I'd just look right at people and tell them you'll screw this up.
Speaker 2:You could read, but I think it becomes so subconscious, you don't think?
Speaker 3:a man. What is it's human behavior?
Speaker 2:Hey, man and I was sitting at this road and I mean, I think it becomes so subconscious when people ask you. You can answer like that or you're well a man.
Speaker 3:It's really. It's out of your control. Yeah, if you read all the research papers, go to every school you could become a polygrapher and probably under pressure when you're lying, I think somebody could get through to you.
Speaker 1:When that cognitive load increases it's extremely, extremely difficult to control all. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it takes a tremendous amount of practice.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, look at our kids, right, I mean when they're young, look at when we were kids and you know Cognitive Load. We could give it other names, like a spanking back then. But what I'm getting at is that. But listen, we've all sensed that when we're confronted, when we're a kid, with dishonesty from our parents, or whatever.
Speaker 3:And all of those emotions really don't change in the adulthood because they're wired in, and don't change into adulthood because they're wired in, and so load is the right word, I'm glad. I'm glad because, like when you were talking, and I'm glad you got to the point about the movement of the chairs and things like that is, I don't want a place where they can dissipate that energy and ride that energy off, except body language and verbally. And so again, we could, because I joked. I think when I promote your polygraph piece is like I think part of the promotional part I did is like tune in and learn how to lie, like you need to lie or you're going to a polygraph tomorrow. I got a show for you.
Speaker 3:You know, it's like but you know, because there are people that they're like I'm going to find the secret. Right, I'm going to find the secret.
Speaker 1:Reminds me, you see him rub his hands like that. Yeah, scheming, wasn't he? Eddie, when you're dealing with somebody, if they rub their hands real fast like that, it's probably a good deal for you and them. Like if you're going to go buy a new car and you're talking to the salesman and the numbers look good, you're happy, he's happy, he's rubbing his hands real fast, it's probably a pretty good deal for you and him. If they rub their hands slow, it's probably only a good deal for just the one person. Why? Because the slow. You ever seen the? When I was a kid there was a cartoon on there was this cat and this cat would say, yeah, I'm going to get that little rat.
Speaker 1:And he would remember he would rub his hands real slow, conniving scheming. That's what I was going to say. Yes, there we go. Rub his hands real slow, kenaidi scheming.
Speaker 3:That's what I was going to say. Yeah, there we go. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:That's exactly what it is. So, yeah, I want to get him on this deal.
Speaker 2:I'm so excited, let's go.
Speaker 1:So when you go to the restaurant and you say what do you recommend? Well, and you see him rub those hands real slow and you're like I think I'll take the lasagna, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they're thinking about that chicken, yeah. So I seen him do that and I was like I love it and I I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:I have to say this again.
Speaker 1:I got to get her back out here Cause?
Speaker 2:no, let's not, she just needs to sit in a chair at home and don't even make eye contact and you know what? Put a bandana on ma'am because he's going to look at your forehead. Keep your bangs down.
Speaker 3:But I'll say this too, that even when you're not trained in it, I think there's, like we said, we measure that in other people. When you go back to who we are as creatures, that is all part of the fundamental thing of how we survive and thrive.
Speaker 1:You know I use these things called themes. It's the read technique and most police officers have been trained on them. I use this thing called the read technique and I develop themes, and themes are basically a reason for someone to admit to doing something. And a lot of times people say well, I just don't remember. I can't remember that, and you talked about the amygdala. The way my brain works is I'll hear something, something will click and like, I need to talk about that. He mentioned the amygdala and I'll say well, listen, that's not the way memory works. Memory doesn't work that way. What do you mean? You remember it all the way back to you're in the fifth grade when you skipped school. You remember the lyrics to a song, the Star Spangled Banner. That song's over 200 years old and you can still remember the lyrics to that song. So you can't remember what you did last month. I ain't, I'm not buying that.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:I say because that's not how memory works. Your memory works this way. Let's say, for instance, you leave here today and I go back to telling them they're leaving today. You leave here today and you go out here to this parking lot, you get in your car and you pull out of the parking lot. You're going to make a left or a right. Okay, even if you make the wrong, you turn the wrong way. That's no big deal. That portion of your memory is made by the prefrontal cortex in your brain. So if you make a decision and you go right and you should have went left well, you can just go down here to four-way stop, do a U-turn and come back. No big deal, nobody cares. It's a mistake, nobody cares.
Speaker 1:What happens is when we start using alcohol, illegal drugs, we start making mistakes that are outside of our character. Our amygdala makes that decision. Let's say you pull out of this parking lot and you're going to make a left or right, but I'm in the passenger seat yelling and screaming make a left, hurry up, make a decision, do this, do that. And there's smoke and there's gunfire and there's people behind you honking the horn. That cognitive load in your brain increases. That pressure increases. When that happens, the amygdala kicks in and makes that decision. The amygdala kicks in and makes that decision. The amygdala doesn't always make the best decisions for us.
Speaker 3:Why we call it the lizard brain.
Speaker 1:Exactly, it's the lizard brain right, and so it doesn't always make the best decision. So when those decisions are made, like having sexual contact with your granddaughter, it's probably a mistake. It's not anything that was done intentionally, because you didn't intentionally try to hurt her. So it's either a mistake or it's something that a predator would do intentionally. Now I don't think you're a predator, but if I'm wrong, you let me know. I think this is a mistake. What I don't know is is this mistake happened once, twice, or has it been happening since she was five years old? Which one is it?
Speaker 3:You make them pick a lesser of evils, lesser to evils.
Speaker 2:Lesser to evils, but I guess, if he says it's never happened, there's no mistake, it's never happened.
Speaker 1:Well, if that's true, then you would have never failed the polygraph test, because people come in every day of the week and pass these tests that are 100% honest. That's the problem, yeah. So then we go back, yeah, and we just go back and go back. And so one of the questions I ask them, I says during the interviews what do you think should happen to a person that did this? And they're like well, I didn't do it, that's not my question. Yeah, my question is what do you think if someone did this, what do you think should happen to that other person? I can usually tell if they're guilty at that point, because most people won't punish themselves.
Speaker 1:There we go, they'll say, well, they should have some counseling, or it was a mistake, just forget it. It won't happen again. If somebody says, well, they need to be castrated or put under the jail or I need to be hung from the high water, you know a lot of way they answer those behavioral analysis. Questions can determine on what they think about why they're there. So it doesn't happen. It doesn't work all the time. But then that goes back to those statement. Analysis is about how they answer those questions. Okay, and I tell everybody. I says you know when we're talking. You know if you're talking about yourself, that's fine. If you use anybody, if you refer to anybody else other than yourself, don't say us, them, they, we, because I don't know who those people are.
Speaker 1:So if you say we went to the store, just tell me, me and Bob went to the store and I have them tell me that Again, that increases that cognitive load because it's like counting backwards from 57 to 32. You got to remember where to start and where to stop and you got to remember all those numbers in between. So that increases that cognitive load. So when they're telling me the story, that incognitive load increases, it makes it harder for them to lie to me. If I keep that cognitive load increased versus letting it come back down, I tell everybody I said, if anybody uses an L-Y word, basically generally, usually directly, there's always more information. Sure, l-y equals lie. So if I say, all right, when do you tell me what you do for a living? Well, basically I do this blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay, hold on, let's back up. There's going to be a lot more to that story. You're just giving me the short version. So if you ask somebody, he says you know, tell me what happened yesterday. Well, basically we got up and so I just let him tell me the whole entire story, don't interrupt him. And then I go back and I was like basically, l-y word, that's a lie. So let's talk about this. I say that to myself, I don't say it to them. So then I'd go back and start asking questions.
Speaker 1:A guy told me one time he was being investigated, he was involved in a hit and run collision where he killed a 12-year-old girl on a bicycle. So I said tell me what you did, went through the whole thing, and he said basically what he said was he drove to the store, bought soda and chips and drove directly home. So I thought to myself directly L-Y word, there's more information there. So then I went back and I gave him a piece of paper. I said draw the store where you were parked at. And when you left the store, which way did you turn? And we broke it down step by step by step by step. And as we were breaking it down step by step by step, he said a dog ran out in front of him and he hit the dog and he kept going. He never told anybody that before. It was kind of a rainy, dark night. I was like that wasn't a dog, that was the girl on the bike that he hit.
Speaker 1:Now he finally went back and said he thought he had hit someone, but he thought he originally said it was a dog and then he changed it that he thought that he hit someone but he didn't want to stop because he just thought it was a dog. Well, it was a girl. He hit the little girl on the bicycle so he kind of it was more of an admission than a confession. But anyway, he ends up going to court and he was found guilty for it. But we got that additional information while I was talking to him just on the word, directly, because I knew that it ended with L-Y. It's a lie. There's more information about it. We'll go back, I'll break it down. And he said that he hit the dog and he had never told him about that information before.
Speaker 3:Super logical. Yeah, because he's not lying. He went directly home, yeah he did. But there was an incident, and again, breaking it down into the segments and the pieces, put him in the area. There we go. That's the difference. Again, too, is even if you got him in the area to commit, that he was on those paths.
Speaker 2:So did he stick to his guy and said I really thought it was a dog or did well, okay, I knew it was a kid because I saw the bicycle.
Speaker 1:He never said I knew it was a kid. He said he thought he hit a dog. I said no, you hit a little girl on a bicycle. Now, if that was me I would have said absolutely not, that was a dog. I saw the dog, I swerved, I missed the dog. He never did anything, he never defended himself. And when I said it was a girl on a bicycle, he stopped, leaned forward, puts his hand up like it on his head over that heart and I was like so you either hit her on purpose, you swerve towards her and hit her, or it was a mistake.
Speaker 1:You swerved and you tried to miss her and at the last second you clipped her and went on. You got scared, you didn't stop, you went straight home. He never denied doing it, but he never admitted to doing it either.
Speaker 3:So still, you gave him the less of evil oh yeah to balance.
Speaker 1:So he just two completely different outcomes, exactly if you know I said you either intentionally hit her, you swerved to try to scare, or you swerved away. You saw her the last second swerved away from you, hit her, you got scared. You went home. I said but you know, and I know it wasn't a dog, you know that, yeah, and you see him lean forward and you know so. Then he starts asking me questions about her is she okay? And I was like you know? I said I really don't know and I knew she was dead but I wasn't gonna tell him. I said I really don't know because it's not my. I'm not a doctor, I don't know how she's doing, I'm just concerned about the collision. But he never actually came out and said yeah, I hit her. He never did that, but he knew he did so anyway. But we got the rest of that information on the L-Y word.
Speaker 1:So uncompleted actions, like if somebody says I think I'm going to go buy me a new pair of shoes, what kind of shoes did you get? Oh, I didn't get any. I just said I was thinking about going. So if someone says, yeah, I decided to plead guilty when I went to court, my next question is did you go to court?
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Did you plead guilty in court? Oh, no, no, my lawyer told me I shouldn't do it. So if you listen to uncompleted action verbs, you need to go back and ask more questions about that, because a lot of times people will give you an uncompleted action verb and you just assume that the action was completed.
Speaker 1:And I've done it. I do it all the time, and I got to force myself to go back and say, okay, so did you go to court? Well, yeah, so you decided not to plead guilty in court, correct? Did you go to court? Yes, so when you got in court, did you plead guilty? Oh, no, my lawyer told me not to do that.
Speaker 3:Okay, okay, so you don't want to assume the action was completed until you ask yeah, because that's a good way to try to walk you away from it.
Speaker 1:They'll start smoke screening. They'll pull you off the path and take you down to another road somewhere.
Speaker 3:It's kind of like road closed, go right, yeah, exactly, I love it. I love it.
Speaker 1:So you got to listen for those action words. So you know, as you're talking to someone, all that comes into play about what they're saying. Um, like I said, I have them tell me the story. I never give them a starting point, unless I want to lock them into a time and have them tell me the entire story, and then I'm telling the story backwards. Okay, so I got home, you know, and, and I got home at nine o'clock, and then that's what happened. So, so what time did you get home? 9 o'clock. Well, tell me again what happened just before that, and then I'll start going backwards to this story. So if they add more information, they're probably telling me the truth about the forward motions of the story, but when they have to stop and think, now what did I?
Speaker 3:tell them just before.
Speaker 1:I can't remember. Yeah, that's a problem. Good point.
Speaker 3:Because if they're walking back and they're telling the truth now, they're recovering memories that they went through and that are important, but I like that too. But if you've lied, there we go. You're remembering, like you said, those six things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, those six things have to kick in and you've got to remember. And it's hard to do. Think about that. And when I teach a class, I make everybody stand up. I say I want everybody to stand up. Everybody in class stands up. I said I want you to walk around the room backwards. Everybody starts walking backwards. Now, every time your left foot strikes the floor, I want you to clap your hands. So now they're walking backwards, left foot strikes the floor and they're clapping their hands. Now, every time you clap your hands, I want you to start at 57 and count backwards to 32. And you'll see people. That's that cognitive load.
Speaker 2:It's too much.
Speaker 1:That's cognitive load. So when you're interviewing somebody and you're having them tell the story backwards, that cognitive load increases and you want to keep it up because now it's much harder to lie to you. So you know, that's just some of the techniques that you can use when it comes to those statement analysis. You know, Listen for emotional words. You know I love those children. You know I really feel bad for those kids. So when you start asking them questions, you use emotional words to ask them the questions. You can also use mirroring words. Right, If someone says I didn't steal that book, that book, you can just repeat the last two or three words, you know, and then stop talking. It's a elicitation technique, you know. Well, I didn't break that window, that window, yeah, you know. Now I may have broken some windows before, but I didn't break that one. So let's talk about those windows you broke, you know, or I didn't break into that yellow car.
Speaker 1:The yellow car I might have broke into the blue, yeah. So let's talk about those windows you broke. Or I didn't break into that yellow car, the yellow car I might have broke into the blue, yeah, yeah. So you can mirror those words. So you can go back and some people call it parroting, some people call it mirroring. You can go back and you can mirror those words. All you're doing is you're giving them an opportunity to provide you more information and, like David said earlier, that silence is golden. It seems you stop talking and they have to fill that void. Guilty people generally have to do that, people that are innocent, they won't do it.
Speaker 3:I think they'll just stare at you.
Speaker 1:They'll just look at you, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, because, like you said, the truth is the truth and if you're comfortable with the truth and you're under no load at that moment, it's a whole different ball of wax. But when people are under that load just like I said, I keep going back to it's kind of, when you step away from it, it's kind of neat because you're watching it. And I remember I don't know if I shared it before, but I had a guy one time that when I got done with everything I needed from him, I had noticed that whenever I would get to the core questions on the case, he would cotton mouth up right here. So we're done and I'm like I had time. So what I would do is just start talking to him and every now and then I'd go back to the thing and I'd be like in my mind.
Speaker 1:I'm like there it is.
Speaker 3:And I'd back off and get comfortable again. I would go away and I'd come back into it and he'd get cotton mouth again.
Speaker 1:I finally quit three or four times because I had shit to do, but at the same time it's like when you can step away and you can see it, you're like, wow, that means something. It reminds me of something I need to talk about and I'm glad you brought this up Cotton mouth. When you lie, cognitive load increases in your brain. Cortisol enters the bloodstream, your blood goes from the extremities of your body to the center core of your body to protect all your vital organs. Mouth starts to dry up, you'll get cotton mouth and your eyes will start to dry. So something that nobody ever talks about blink rate.
Speaker 1:When you talk to people, look at their eyes. Most people blink about 15 to 18 blinks per minute. When cognitive load increases, one or two things are going to occur. They're really going to start blinking fast because their eyes are starting to dry out. So they need to lubricate the eyes or that blink rate will go down to like four blinks a minute. If you're playing a video game, you're reading a book, you're watching a movie if you look at someone's eyes as they're watching a movie, that blink rate will really slow down because that cognitive load increases. They're concentrating on the movie. Playing a video game, watching a book, all right. The opposite occurs, all right. They'll start blinking real fast to try to lubricate the eyes when people lie to you.
Speaker 1:You look for that deviation. So as you're talking to somebody, a lot of times you'll see me, detectives ask me. They'll see me sitting in a room and I'll be going like this with my fingers. What I'm doing is I'm counting their blink rates with my fingers, how many blinks. So I do it for like 15 seconds. So I'll count their blink rates as I'm asking them questions and talking to them, looking at their baseline. So then when I ask them about stealing the watch and their blink rate dramatically increases, I'm like why did the blink rate dramatically increase when I ask about the watch? But it didn't increase when I asked them about their children's grades in school. So I look for that deviation and that baseline.
Speaker 1:So there's a lot of times that people and everybody looks at people when they talk to them but nobody ever looks at their eye blink rate. I have a good point Nobody ever does it and I never did it until I started doing some research and I started finding out about there's a lot of papers and stuff out there written on the cognitive load and how it increases the blink rate, how it will change based on that cognitive load. So then I go back and I start thinking about DUIs that I'd done in the past and I'm looking at people when I'm giving them the HGN, horizontal gaze and stagmas test and I'm looking at their blink rates. I noticed that people that were not intoxicated I didn't see a big difference in the change, but anytime I could notice that someone's eyes, the HGN really set off, you could see them blink their eyes a whole lot and it was real red in their glasses and they blinked their eyes a lot. And so see them blink their eyes a whole lot and it was real red in their glass and they blinked their eyes a lot. And so I'm thinking of you know why.
Speaker 1:At the time when I was doing, I didn't know why it happened. But now, going back and researching it and looking and watching these interviews, a lot of times I'll sit there when I'm talking to somebody, I'll just look at their blinker yeah, good point. And I'm like, well, I need to go back and it doesn't mean they're lying, I just need to go back and ask them the questions about why did it change at that point? So then I'll go back and start asking those questions. But when those mucous membranes start to dry out, you'll see those little white protein marks on the side of their mouth. A thousand years ago, the Chinese used to put rice in people's mouth and they would ask them a question. Then they would have them spit the rice out. Well, if the rice was dry, they were lying.
Speaker 1:Stick to their mouth, yeah they were lying, but if it was moist, then they were telling the truth. That was one of the lie detection techniques they used, you know, hundreds of years ago in China, ancient Chinese secret.
Speaker 3:Yeah, exactly, they're writing something, yeah exactly, and again, you can't control that. You can't. That's. What I'm saying is that these physiological and things that happen, like the chemicals that get pushed through our body, are there for a reason. They've been there forever, hopefully. That's why we're alive again, but you can't control that. You can walk in and think you can control that, but you won't be able to. I think that's what's brilliant about it.
Speaker 1:You know, a lot of times you'll ask people questions.
Speaker 2:They'll give you a referral statement.
Speaker 3:Hey, you know there's more to the story, so go download the next episode, like the true crime fan that you are, the Murder Police Podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten.
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Speaker 3:Judy.
