In short
Criminal Podcast Episode Summary: Interrogation Room
Episode Overview
- Title: Interrogation Room
- Host: Phoebe Judge
- Description: This episode explores the dynamics of a prolonged 17-hour interrogation that leads a woman, identified as Susan (pseudonym), to confess to a murder she did not commit. It delves into the techniques used in interrogation rooms, the phenomenon of false confessions, and features insights from Maurice Chammah and a multi-part podcast series titled “Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry.”
Key Themes
- False Confessions
- Defined as admissions of guilt by individuals who did not commit the crime.
- Statistics indicate that nearly a third of exoneration cases involve false confessions (Innocence Project).
- Interrogation Techniques
- Focus on the Reed Technique, which is widely used in the U.S. for interrogation.
- Techniques include intimidation, false evidence presentation, and emotional manipulation.
- The Reed Technique promotes a “good cop/bad cop” dynamic, often leading to coercive environments.
- Impact of Psychological Pressure
- Confessions often arise from psychological tactics rather than actual guilt.
- Techniques can lead to a suspect's short-term desire to end the interrogation, resulting in long-term consequences.
Case Study
The Confession of Susan Initial Investigation
- A man was found dead near the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C.
- Detective Jim Tranum led the investigation, using ATM footage and credit card transactions to identify a suspect.
Interrogation Process
- Susan denied involvement initially but was subjected to various pressure tactics.
- Voice Stress Analysis Test:
- She failed this test, indicating deception.
Building the Confession
- Tranum and his team employed persuasion, implying they had significant evidence against her.
- After extended questioning, she confessed to participating in the murder, providing details that the detectives believed only the true perpetrator would know.
Retracting the Confession
- Following her confession, Susan tried to recant, claiming she fabricated the story under pressure.
- A review of her sign-in logs from a shelter revealed that she could not have been present at the time of the murder.
Conclusion of the Case
- Handwriting analysis later proved she did not sign the credit card slips tied to the case.
- Charges against Susan were dropped due to insufficient evidence linking her to the crime.
Other Case Study
Larry Driscoll
- Another interrogation example features Larry Driscoll, who confessed to a murder but later claimed he had no memory of the event.
- His interrogation involved psychological manipulation and leading questions, resulting in a false confession.
- He was sentenced to 15 years before being released on parole after DNA evidence cleared him.
Discussion of Interrogation Techniques Reed Technique
- Developed in the mid-20th century, it emphasizes aggressive questioning methods.
- Critics argue that it can lead to false confessions, especially among vulnerable populations.
Alternatives to Current Methods
- Newer techniques focus on rapport-building rather than coercion.
- Emphasis on allowing suspects to speak and present their narratives to avoid leading to false confessions.
The Role of Law Enforcement
- Law enforcement agencies vary in their interrogation training, impacting the prevalence of false confessions.
- Critics call for reforms in training to adopt more humane and scientifically supported methods.
Conclusion The episode emphasizes the complexities of interrogation methods and the psychological mechanics behind false confessions. It raises questions about the ethical implications of current interrogation practices and suggests a need for reform in law enforcement strategies to prevent wrongful convictions.
Resources
- For further information, the episode references the Innocence Project and the Marshall Project's ongoing work related to wrongful convictions and interrogation practices.
Social Media & Engagement
- Listeners are encouraged to follow the show on social media and subscribe for updates and newsletters.
---
This summary encapsulates the essential discussions and insights from the podcast episode "Interrogation Room," highlighting the critical issues surrounding interrogation tactics, false confessions, and their significant repercussions in the criminal justice system.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Support for Criminal comes from Saks Fifth Avenue. Saks Fifth Avenue makes it easy to do holiday shopping your way, whether you're looking for the right gift or the right outfit. Saks is where you can find everything from a Jimmy Choo bag for a sister who's hard to shop for to a Prada jacket for yourself to dress up for holiday dinner. If you don't know where to start, Saks.com will filter just for items that match your personal style so you can save time shopping and spend more time just enjoying the holidays. Make shopping fun and easy this season and find gifts that suit your holiday style at Saks Fifth Avenue.
0:34Amazon has everything for everyone on your list. Like your sister, who refuses to accept that she does not have a face for bangs. Get her a lovely hat. Amazon has a huge selection of fashionable gifts. And with holiday deals, you can save big on hats, home decor, even the hottest toys. Grab some barrettes while you're at it. For that oh-so-awkward, sweep your hair to the side until your bangs grow out stage.
1:07This was a man who, he worked for the government, he lived in the suburbs, he leaves his office one day to go home. He's parked his car several blocks away from his office, but he never makes it home. So the next day, I get a call that there's a body found over by the river. And I go over there. It's going to be my case because I was the detective on call. It was Detective Jim Tranum's first major homicide case. This was in February 1994, in Washington, D.C., along the Anacostia River. Detective Tranum learned that the man had been beaten to death. He checked bank records and found that the man's ATM card had been recently used.
1:55And the ATM photo was a very grainy photo of a short white female wearing a baseball hat down over her face and also glasses. They found that the man's credit card had been used at a drugstore and a Chinese restaurant, and then at a liquor store. This woman had walked into a liquor store, short, blonde woman with a baseball hat and glasses, ordered a bottle of Tennessee and a carton of cigarettes. But one of the store employees at the time walked in and made a comment about the cops were handing out parking tickets. Well, she said, oh my God, I can't get a ticket. And she ran out leaving the credit card and the credit card receipt that she had just signed behind.
2:44So one of the things that we did was we had a composite drawing made from the witnesses at the liquor store, and we published that. So we had gotten a couple of tips about a couple of different women. And there was this one in particular about this young woman who actually lived in the area, was known by police officers in the area where the victim had been kidnapped. And so what we did was we were able to gather handwriting samples from things like court records. And so what we wanted to do was a handwriting comparison to the credit card slips that were signed in the name of the victim. Jim Trainham took the handwriting samples and credit card slips to a handwriting expert.
3:36And he took the material and he came back and he said, we're 99 % sure that it's this woman here, Susan, who signed the credit card slips. It's her. Susan isn't the woman's real name. Jim Tranum told us he'd prefer not to use real names to respect the privacy of everyone involved. He says Susan was living in a shelter for families with her children. They got a warrant for credit card fraud and arrested her. We decided that what we would do was, during an interrogation, see if we could get her to admit to participating or having some knowledge about the murder. So I began to interview her to begin the interrogation.
4:26And at the beginning, she denied, denied, denied, denied. We showed her the ATM photo. And we said, well, this is you. And even though, I mean, it was so grainy, it could be anybody. Then I confront her with the credit card slips and all of that. And she keeps denying, keeps denying. But she agrees to take what's called a computerized voice stress analysis test. It's very similar to a polygraph. It's run the same way, except it's supposed to measure not like your heartbeat and your respirations, but it's supposed to measure the tension within your vocal cords. So she took that and she failed. It so showed her as being deceptive.
5:16So here we go. We have the forensic evidence. We have her failing this voice stress test. And so we just kept going, pushing and pushing and pushing. eventually she said okay i found the credit cards i found them and i used them and i i purchased things with them at that point we figured okay this is all we're going to get from her so we videotaped the initial confession that she found the credit cards but she couldn't tell us the right places where she had made the purchases, and she couldn't tell us, you know, how much was spent. So we kept talking to her, talking to her more and more and more.
6:01We had, you know, different people come in and talk to her. Jim says he offered a few different explanations of what might have happened that night. He called them themes. In one, he suggested that the victim had done something bad to Susan, and she just wanted him to stop bothering her. Jim told us that he thought Susan was too physically small to have committed the murder alone, and the credit card had been charged for three meals at the Chinese restaurant. So Jim says he kept telling her, we know you were involved, implying that if she told them who the other guys were, he would help her. and after several hours she finally said you're right i did it i participated with these two other guys she gives us a scenario and she also gives us details about what happened where the crime occurred and all this other stuff that as we love to say only the true killer would have known.
7:06Now, a lot of the stuff didn't make sense, but she gave us those facts, and we were excited about that because, you know, we figured she's still trying to protect somebody. However, she's able to give us these facts that she should not have known unless she was there. So she had confessed. She confessed. Susan was charged with first-degree murder. The interrogation had lasted 17 hours. Over the next few days, Jim continued to interrogate her for more details. But he says he didn't really get anywhere. And then she tried to take back her confession. And so finally she told her attorney, you know, look, I wasn't there.
7:54I didn't do it. I just told them the story that they wanted to hear. So I went out and started to cooperate or try to cooperate more of the details of what she provided to us. And one of the things that I did was I went to the homeless shelter where she was staying at the time. And I know that they had a sign in sign out log that was very strictly regulated by the security people there. And I had a subpoena, and I got a copy of the log. And I knew what the log was going to say. It was going to show her as being out that night. But as I'm driving back to the office, I start flipping through it.
8:36And I realize, I almost wrecked the car. Because I realized that even though she was out some of the times that we needed her to be out, she was not out during the critical moments. So we were perplexed. Jim Trainham and his team decided to go back to the beginning. They looked again at the handwriting sample. The expert they had consulted had been sure Susan had signed the credit card slips. But Jim wanted to get a second opinion. So he asked handwriting experts at the FBI and Secret Service to take a look. And both of them came back to me and they said, absolutely, positively, there is no way that this woman signed these credit card slips.
9:21But she'd confessed, and Jim Trenum didn't know why. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
9:36We'll be right back.
9:51Support for Criminal comes from Quince. Quince delivers everyday essentials for cooler weather that feel luxurious, look timeless, and make holiday dressing and gift-giving feel effortless. I've decided that I'll be getting the same gift for a lot of people this year. And that's a 100 % Yakwole turtleneck sweater from Quince. If you know me, get ready for your Yakwole sweater. If you need other gift ideas, go look at their Josie European leather braided belt. It's kind of a fun 90s throwback braided belt for a good price. And my last suggestion is a real favorite around here. And that is the Quince Mongolian Cashmere Gloves.
10:29One of our producers swears by these. They're very soft and look good year after year. Step into the holiday season with layers made to feel good, look polished and last from Quince. Perfect for gifting or keeping for yourself. Go to quince.com slash criminal for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. now available in Canada too. That's q-u-i-n-c-e dot com slash criminal to get free shipping and 365 day returns. quince.com slash criminal.
11:03Support for Criminal comes from Bombas. Putting on a new pair of socks is a great feeling, especially if they're Bombas socks, made to fit comfortably while giving your feet the support they need for any activity. Bombas has everything from warm merino wool, cashmere blend socks, to everyday compression socks, to perfectly cushioned running socks. And they offer more than socks, too. You can find a new pair of plush slippers or soft quality t-shirts. I've tried Bombas myself, and they've become one of my go-to gifts for friends and families. Their half-calf socks fit just right and never slip down.
11:39I wear them all the time. And another thing that sets Bombas apart is their mission. For every pair of Bombas you purchase, they donate one to someone facing homelessness. So anytime you get something cozy, someone else can too. Head over to bombas.com slash criminal and use code criminal for 20 % off your first purchase. That's b-o-m-b-a-s dot com slash criminal, code criminal at checkout.
12:06The charges against Susan were dropped, and she was released. What did you make of it? you know, is it just a big puzzle why she had? Absolutely. We figured at that time, okay, she wasn't there. She didn't sign the credit card slips, but she had to have known something. She had some connection to this because she knew all those details that only the true killer would have known. It was a real puzzle. And it was sometime later, I mean, after I started to put some distance between myself and the case when I started delving more. I was now working in the cold case unit. I was now setting up a program where we were going to do a systematic review of all these old cases, seeing what we could do with them forensically.
12:55And that's when I decided to watch the videotapes again of the confessions. So when I put it in and I started watching it, I started to see what was happening. What I was realizing was that in bits and pieces, we were providing her with details about the case. And as time went on, she would take those little details that we provided to her over time and include them as part of her narrative. So at the end, it looked like she was able to tell us all of these confidential details about what happened during the crime that she shouldn't have known, but they came from us and not her. Just as an example, as part of the video about the credit card slips, I showed her the credit card slips because I wanted her to point out on the video, yes, this is where I signed his name.
13:59And you could see her on the video looking, studying the credit card slips. Now think about what you can get off a credit card slip. You can get the name of the store, you can get the location of the store, and you can get the amount that was spent. But you can't get the items. So later on when she's confessing, quote unquote, she told us the name of the store, she told us roughly where the store was, on what street it was. And she told us close to what was spent, but she was never accurately able to tell us what she bought. Jim Trainham could see that not only had they provided Susan with the right answers, they'd also brushed away the wrong answers she gave.
14:49It's kind of like a game of 20 questions. You know, she's picking up little bits and pieces here, and she's putting it into a narrative. and like let's say she gets a narrative wrong she says okay i did this no you're lying you're lying we know that didn't happen well okay i did this no you're lying well did i did it this way okay you're close right okay we're getting there so that's how it develops and for susan And, you know, I guess, I mean, why wouldn't she just refuse? Say, no, I'm not. No, I didn't. You know, the thing is, it's like sometimes the short-term benefits of confessing outweigh the long-term consequences.
15:36Like, I get this over with. They stop harassing me. I can go home. That sort of thing. Now, think about the number of bad decisions that you've made in your life based on that. the short-term benefits outweigh the long-term consequences. What do you remember thinking as you were watching back to the tapes? Oh my God. I felt sick. And that's actually, I've seen the tape over and over again. I just had this sinking feeling when I see it. Because what's so obvious to me now wasn't obvious back then.
16:18According to the Innocence Project, nearly a third of the exoneration cases they've tracked involved false confessions. They found that people gave false confessions during interrogations using tactics including, quote, intimidation, isolation, and deceptive methods that include lying about evidence, among others. Police departments in the United States can choose how they train their officers to conduct interrogations. There's a company in Chicago called Johnny Reed and Associates that teaches something called the Reed Technique. According to Reed and Associates, the Reed Technique of interviewing and interrogation is the most widely used approach to question subjects in the world.
17:11I think many people are very familiar with interrogation rooms from popular culture. Marshall Project reporter Maurice Shema. You know, you have that image in your mind, I think, of the light bulb that hangs down and the good cop, bad cop routine. You know, the one who is nice and kind and builds a rapport and the other one who berates and throws the book. and those by and large may be exaggerated but they're based in the kind of real culture of police interrogations that the reed technique inaugurated decades ago and has really become so pervasive that even detectives who are not explicitly trained in the reed technique still use it because it's passed down uh and many of the principles of it have just kind of suffused themselves into the culture of detective work so even if nobody's looking at the manuals even if They're just getting trained by the in-house, you know, senior detectives who have been doing this for decades.
18:07Minimizing, lying, maximizing the cost of not confessing. All of this is part and parcel of police interrogation across the country in the United States. And really at this point, whether or not you bring the Reed name into it, it is just the way that we interrogate people. The Reed technique was developed in the 1940s and 50s by a law professor named Fred Inbaugh and a Chicago police officer named John Reed. At the time that he was starting out as a street cop, cops were still getting confessions by what we would now call the third degree, where you would literally beat people for a confession, right?
18:45It was not uncommon, especially when the suspect was disadvantaged in various other ways, maybe because of their race or because of a low IQ or because they're young. to not just berate them, but to beat them up. And it wasn't until the early 20th century that the courts started to be a little bit more proactive about trying to protect suspects from violence. There was this idea that it actually did violate your constitutional rights if you were beaten up in the interrogation room. J. Edgar Hoover, the longtime director of the FBI, found these so-called third-degree tactics dishonorable. He wanted police officers to be more professional, and for interrogations to be more scientific.
19:29And there's, in the 1950s and 60s, a growing sense that detectives can use science to try to solve crimes. This is a kind of golden age of ballistics. DNA is still far way away, but people are analyzing blood and bullet casings and tire marks and all sorts of other elements of the crime scene, and there's this hope that through a more scientific approach, you can solve these crimes. And the Reed technique kind of comes about in that same moment. So if you had gone into the interrogation room with John Reed, take me through kind of step by step what it would look like. You know, you walk in and you're sometimes told that you're a suspect, but in other cases you're just told that you are a potential witness or that the police want your help, right?
20:24I've looked at a lot of cases in which an interrogator brings someone in under the auspices of, you know, we think you might be able to help us with this investigation. And so it enlists the suspect as cooperative. Maurice says at first, the suspect might be offered a cup of coffee and only be asked a few simple questions. This step is in part to observe the suspect's behavior. Notably, what you don't know as the suspect is that the detective is watching for little tells, right? The things that I think in popular lore we often think indicate that someone is lying. Are you looking down? Are you refusing to make eye contact?
21:03Read technique trainers will say that, you know, there's no one-size-fits-all answer to what it is to mean that someone's lying, but you want to set a baseline of their normal behavior, right? If they're always darting their eyes, then darting eyes doesn't mean they're lying. But if you set a baseline where they usually make eye contact and then suddenly dart their eyes away, that's a sign that they may not be telling you the truth. But psychologists who have studied this have found that detectives, whether read-trained or not, tend to be no better at deducing whether someone is lying than the average person.
21:34And in fact, it's even more dangerous because they express more confidence about their ability to deduce lying than the average person. The part where the interrogator tries to determine if the suspect is lying or not is referred to as the behavioral analysis interview. According to Reed and Associates, it has its roots in the polygraph technique. Maurice says sometimes an interrogator still might also give a polygraph, even though psychologists have found that they aren't reliable and that there is, quote, little evidence that they work. Maurice says that once an interrogator believes a suspect is lying, the questions might get a little more intense.
22:20John Reed co-authored a book about interrogations with Fred Inbaugh. In it, they compared the interrogator's work to, quote, a hunter stalking his game. Slowly, the Reed-style detective will introduce evidence that they have collected. One, you know, very classic technique that is spread throughout the country is to have, you know, the giant binders that you bring in. And they could be empty. They could be filled with random scraps of paper or with Chinese food receipts. But it gives the suspect this impression that you've done a lot of research. So you can bring real evidence. You can say your DNA was found on the scene.
23:00You can lie. Maybe there was no DNA evidence and you can still say that your DNA was found on the scene. And you slowly get the suspect to start to question their own memory, to give you more information that tries to sort of explain their way out. But actually, they are digging themselves in deeper. And this is all legal to just kind of lie in the interrogation.
23:48people and sort of pull them towards a confession. Features of the Reed technique might include the interrogator minimizing the crime, not giving the suspect a chance to deny anything, and talking a lot, talking so much that the suspect gets caught up in the momentum. Of course, someone like John Reed, many of the interrogators who practice the technique and similar styles of interrogation are catching guilty people much of the time, maybe even most of the time. But what psychologists have come to start to understand is that sometimes these techniques also will produce a false confession from an innocent person.
24:32We contacted Reed and Associates and asked them about claims that the technique can produce false confessions. Their president, Joseph Buckley, told us that they just follow the guidelines of the courts, citing a Supreme Court decision from 1969 that has paved the way for interrogators to lie and introduce false evidence. He said, quote, It has been well documented by numerous court decisions that false confessions are not caused by the application of the read technique, but are usually caused by interrogators engaging in coercive behaviors. He compared it to teaching someone heart surgery. If the student botches a heart surgery, that doesn't mean you stop teaching heart surgery.
25:22Joseph Buckley also directed us to videos on their YouTube channel describing the technique and best practices, such as always conducting a non-accusatory investigative interview before any interrogation, not introducing, quote, fictitious evidence while interrogating juveniles or individuals with mental or psychological impairments, and remembering that the confession is not the end of the investigation. He also pointed us to the Reed technique's core principles, which include not conducting interrogations for an excessively long period of time and not promising leniency. When Detective Jim Trainham was a new homicide detective in Washington, D.C., he bought a Reed Technique textbook and says he had on-the-job training from other detectives who'd been trained in the Reed Technique.
26:21Basically what I was taught is you go in there, you accuse the person of committing the crime, you basically block any kind of denial that they may give you, you kind of brush it away and then you offer them excuses as to why they may have committed the crime. You basically tell them, look, we know you did it. The evidence is there. There's nothing that you can do that will convince us otherwise. Our investigation has proven that you did it. All we want to understand is why you did it. And then we start offering what they call themes. And a theme may be something like, let's say you stole the money from the cash register because the cash register drawer was open and anybody would have been tempted.
27:05You were behind on your bills. It was a spur of the moment thing, that sort of stuff. And you just basically keep doing those over and over. If they don't buy one theme, you just keep on with another theme. And you do most of the talking because if you let them deny, then basically what's going to happen is it's going to make them harder to confess. What we do is to temporarily create this perception that no matter how bad it looks, it's in your best interest to cooperate and tell the detective what they think is true.
27:48Several years ago, reporter Maurice Chema heard about a case in Texas. A man named Larry Driscoll had confessed to a murder. while also claiming he didn't remember committing it. Almost right away, he tried to take back his confession, but he was sentenced to 15 years in prison. Maurice Shammah interviewed Larry Driscoll, who said that he'd been manipulated into falsely confessing by a Texas ranger named James Holland. In 2019, James Holland made headlines after he'd spent hundreds of hours interrogating a man named Samuel Little, who then confessed to 93 murders. The Los Angeles Times called James Holland, quote, a serial killer whisperer of sorts.
28:39And so the idea that this very famous, very celebrated detective also may have produced a false confession was just such a contradiction. James Holland interrogated Larry Driscoll in 2015. The murder he confessed to occurred in 2005 in a rural area west of Fort Worth. Two hikers discovered the body of a young woman in an area under a bridge. This was fairly far from a main road, and police descended on the scene and eventually figured out that this was a young woman named Bobby Sue Hill. Bobby Sue Hill was a mother of five from the Fort Worth area, and at the time of her death was working as a sex worker on the streets of Fort Worth.
Read the full transcript
29:28The only real lead that the police had to go on was that her then-boyfriend, a man named Michael Harden, said that he had been with her and they had been soliciting Johns from a payphone, you know, by a main road. Michael Harden told police that a white van had pulled up, and Bobby Sue Hill got into the van. He said he saw the driver through the window. Then the van sped off with Bobby Sue Hill inside. Her body was later found by the hikers. Michael Harden told the police what the man looked like. And he describes this man to a sketch artist. The sketch artist produces an image of a face that has a big bushy mustache and kind of a high, wide forehead.
30:17So that's where the case ends in 2005, 2006. Now, 10 years pass, and it becomes one of, you know, hundreds of cold cases. But the Texas Rangers have a cold case unit. The Texas Rangers are, of course, this sort of storied, elite, FBI-style law enforcement agency that covers the entirety of the state. James Holland decided to open the case back up. And Holland, in order to solve it, goes back to Hardin, the boyfriend, and enlists a hypnotist. This is where the case gets kind of strange. While he was under hypnosis, Michael Harden described the man who had abducted Bobby Sue Hill to a sketch artist for a second time.
31:05This sketch looks nothing like the one from almost a decade before. It's got a much, much fainter mustache. You know, the first one had a big, bushy mustache. This one has just like the barest trace of a kind of five o 'clock shadow. It's got a very clear, flat top, sort of military-style haircut. The man looks a little thinner in the face, and they go a step further. The sketch artist under Holland's directing basically ages this image to guess what the perpetrator would have looked like 10 years later. And this is what goes out into the news media, and eventually someone calls up a pawn shop owner and says, you know, that looks like a man who comes in here sometimes named Larry Driscoll.
31:47In January 2015, James Holland asked Larry Driscoll to talk. And really framed it as, we think you may have seen something that would help us solve this crime, right? So please just help us, please. And, you know, Driscoll sees an image of this woman, the image that they have of her, and wants to help, right? They talked for two days. We don't know whether James Holland was trained in the Reed technique. We reached out to the Texas Rangers and to James Holland, but didn't hear back. In Maurice Shema's reporting, he says that in reviewing the interrogation tapes, he sees the influence of the read technique, but he also says it's important to be clear that we have no way of knowing when, or if, an interrogator is intentionally trying to use read training.
32:41Maurice also says he sees some things that have nothing to do with read. We think, based on the information that we've been given, that we're very positive of, that you were the last person seen with this girl. And we think that you, sir, can solve this crime. When I talk about missing pieces of the puzzle, I don't think you're a murderer or anything like that. But based on everything we have right now, I mean, 10 years of this case going on, and the new information that we have and the composites, the computer matchup, the pick-out of a photo lineup and all these different things, based on all that, man, we can put you with this girl in that van off that street, and we think that you can solve this.
33:38Okay. And all we need to do is for you to tell us where you dropped her off at. That's what I'm saying. Because we think that the person, you, who she was in the vehicle with, that they dropped her off, and then we think that another person picked her up and killed her. That's one of the things that we're looking at. Right. But we got her with you, all right? I need you to just tell us where you dropped her off at. James Holland didn't actually have any concrete proof that Larry Driscoll had been in that area of town with a woman in his van. You are the missing link in this puzzle. Okay. I don't have the missing link.
34:19I don't ever remember seeing him. I could have picked somebody up and gave him a ride somewhere, but I don't even remember for sure if we had the van at that time. Well, let's think back to 2005. Throughout the interrogation, you can hear James Holland offering scenarios and Larry Driscoll seeming unsure. And there's a girl who gets in your van for a little bit. I don't remember any of this, but okay. Could it have happened? It could have happened, and I just not remember it. But like I said, as far as I know of, it's never happened, and I've never had that van in 2005 down there, as far as I know of in my mind.
35:02What do you mean by that? You keep saying it is in my mind. What does that mean? In someone else's mind it could have happened? I've never heard that saying. In my mind, I don't remember off the top of my head being there. We're doing anything. We're doing what? Being there. Larry Driscoll told James Holland it was possible he was in that part of town. He said it was possible he'd visited his father in a shelter there, but kept repeating he didn't remember ever giving anyone a ride. And then after a while, he said that it was possible he had given someone a ride. He brought up Dollar General. He mentioned maybe dropping someone off at a 7-Eleven.
35:50And over time, Driscoll thinks he's being helpful to Holland by mining his memory. But the way Holland interprets it is that Driscoll isn't being truthful, right? That he initially was withholding information and now it's starting to trickle out, you know? But to Driscoll, this is just being cooperative and mining his poor memory for little fragments from 10 years in the past that might be helpful to the investigation. But he's slowly pulling himself deeper and deeper into admitting that he was purportedly there at the time and thus making himself more and more of a suspect. There's things that I can do to recall your memory, so you can help us.
36:34But I can't do those things if there's any inclination that you could be a suspect of this. If we walk in here and you said, yeah, you know, maybe I know that girl. And definitely I've been down East Lancaster Street. Yeah, I've had my white van down East Lancaster Street. And yeah, I've given some girls some money in East Lancaster Street. And yeah, I've given some girls some rides on East Lancaster Street. Then we're in a totally different spot. But the problem is we start off with, I never had that van in East Lancaster Street. I was only down there in 1985. and we've morphed back to this, okay, I was there in 2005.
37:05Because I still remember. Okay. Oh, yeah. Okay, and in 2005 I was down there in this van. In 2005 I might have given this girl a ride. I definitely gave two girls rides in 2005, one at 7-Eleven, one at the Dollar General. I gave her, you know, let a girl get in and get warm. I gave her girls some money. I mean, all of a sudden we're in a different spot. Right. At the end of the day, James Holland asked Larry to come back the next day and take a polygraph test. Here's the audio from the end of that first day. I mean, what's my gut? My gut is you probably ace this thing tomorrow and walk on down the road.
37:44Hopefully you can remember something to help us out. If I can, I'll tell you when I get here. But if I can, I can't remember it. Yeah, come up here tomorrow. Get a good night's sleep. Relax. Take it easy. You've done these things before. I'm going home to drink a beer. There you go. Have one for me, too. Maybe two. And so then he goes back in the next morning. Driscoll takes the polygraph. The results indicate that he's lying. And suddenly the tone shifts. And Holland says, you know, the machine says you're lying. Which means that even if, you know, I don't believe you, basically, when you deny that you had something to do with this woman's murder.
38:21Dude, you didn't just, like, barely miss that? You bombed that polygraph. Right. Holland says something even more striking, which is, yesterday when we were talking, it slipped out. You said that you did it, which is a lie. But now Driscoll is questioning his own memory of the day before and kind of feeling, you know, he's being gaslit in a way. At one point, James Holland asked Larry to say the words, I'm sorry. Can you do something for me? What's that? Say I'm sorry. For what? Just say it. Sorry for what? I didn't do nothing. Just say it. Just say I'm sorry. I'm sorry, but I still didn't do nothing.
39:01Say it like you mean it. I'm sorry, but I didn't do anything. I don't remember anything. Nothing after that. Just those two words. I'm sorry. I'm not admitting to nothing because I didn't do anything. I'm not asking you to admit to anything. I'm just saying. Now, do I need to call my attorney or what? Larry Driscoll asked if he needed to call an attorney a few times. But because he phrased it as a question and not a statement, James Holland was able to ignore him and keep going. At one point in the interrogation, Larry Driscoll told James Holland, you're trying to ruin my life. James Holland says, no, I'm trying to save your life.
39:41I'm trying to save your life because if you don't paint this picture, Larry, then you're going to force us to paint. I don't know of a picture to paint. If you don't help us, then we're going to fill in the blanks ourselves and you don't need this because this can be a lot of different things. I know you. And I told you the other day that I know you. And I know that you're not just this killing son of a bitch or anything, all right? But I know that sometimes shit goes wrong and accidents happens. And I told you that this girl was on crack. She was messed up on dope and she was robbing people. And this could very easily be self-defense, okay?
40:13This could be shit that just went wrong. It could be a lot of different things, Larry. This is your chance. No one's going to question your story on this. We're You're lying. You're full of shit. We're going to sit here and listen to it because it's your story. All right? But if we leave this room today saying that this didn't happen, you don't have anything to do with it, brother, we're going to be turning around. We're going to have the DNA back, which I already know is going to come back to you. And we're going to be throwing you in jail, and we're going to be filling it in. You got a chance.
40:39This doesn't have to ruin your whole life. All right? I can't tell you what I don't know. It's what I'm telling you. I wish I could tell you something. And over the course of, I think, six or so hours that second day, slowly Holland pulls him in with some of these techniques that are kind of Reed-influenced, like minimizing, you know, and saying, well, maybe you picked this woman up, maybe you were going to pay her for sex, and then maybe you were afraid that she was going to rob you, and you strangled her, right? Let me tell you something, all right? Because I'm a good Christian person, and you are too.
41:13You go to church every Sunday, all right? If they would have tried to take my wallet or they would have attacked me and they were screwed up on dope, I would have defended myself. I would have did probably what you did. All right? I'm not saying I did anything because I don't think I did. I would have done the same thing. All right? And then James Holland started prompting Larry to describe how it might have happened, hypothetically. Let's talk in hypotheticals for a second. All right? You know what hypothetical means? it doesn't mean that it happened it means that possibility it could have it might not have it's just like bullshit and just kind of talking through things let's talk to this thing say the word hypothetically hypothetically so hypothetically everything that comes out of your mouth right now possibly could have happened or maybe it didn't happen but it's in your mind and you want to explain it to us and we want to work through it.
42:10You're not admitting anything, you're saying hypothetically. So hypothetically, if this thing went down, hypothetically, how would it have gone down? Here's what happened about 20 minutes later. Just say hypothetically, I was down there and they were trying to rob me. Just say hypothetically, I was down there and they were trying to rob me. That didn't mean there's something that I don't even know. You're not admitting shit because you're saying hypothetically. That doesn't mean it happened or it didn't happen. It just means it's shit that we're talking about. when you say hypothetically, it's not walking into anything.
42:42Hypothetically, I was down there. Two people tried to rob me. Just saying. You know, Driscoll keeps denying. It says, no, that's not what happened. I don't remember any of this. You're on the edge of the Grand Canyon, right? I'm asking you to take a jump off the edge and do something that's very uncomfortable to you. It's very obvious, all right? When you do that, I'm going to reach out and I'm going to hand you a parachute. And that parachute is, I'm going to help you through this. I'm going to help you with your statement. I'm going to go to the DA and I'm going to tell them that you're a good person and that sometimes shit happens on accident or that you're being robbed or whatever.
43:23I'm going to hand you that parachute and I'm going to help you through this, but you've got to let me help you through this. Again, James Holland asked Larry Driscoll to say the words, I'm sorry. Let's try this. I'm sorry.
43:42I'm sorry if I took somebody's life. But I don't think I'd get it. You feel better. You feel better and I can see it and it's rolling off your shoulders because it's been tearing you up 10 years. It's okay. Accidents happen.
44:01It's okay. It's okay. It's okay. You feel better, don't you?
44:20It's okay.
44:25You're a good person. I know that you're a good person. It's okay.
44:42We'll be right back.
44:49Fox Creative. This is Advertiser Content, brought to you by Nature Sunshine New Marine Glow Collagen. Blue light is everywhere. We wake up, we look at our phones, we're watching TV. We don't realize how much blue light in itself can affect our skin. My name is Dr. Brianna Olamiju. I am a dermatologist based in New York City. We know that blue light causes free radical breakdown, and free radicals create oxidative stress on the cells. And so when the cells are stressed out, the collagen is breaking down more easily, and that's when the aging process can be accelerated prematurely. Screens in blue light aren't going anywhere.
45:35That's why Nature's Sunshine New Marine Glow combines the age-defying properties of marine collagen with skin-supporting vitamins and antioxidants and powerful blue light-busting lutein. What we know about lutein is that it is a natural blue light filter. Lutein and antioxidants are like a power couple. Combined, they can prevent premature aging and collagen breakdown. Experience more radiant skin and proven eye protection with Nature Sunshine New Marine Glow, the only collagen product clinically proven to support eye and skin health and defend against blue light. Try Nature Sunshine New Marine Glow now at naturesunshine.com.
46:20Right now is the AI gold rush. And that means everybody who builds an app, a platform, a piece of software, a gizmo that somebody, anything, everybody is trying to put AI everywhere. And for two weeks in a series on the Vergecast, we are talking through what that looks like. We're talking to developers about what they're building and how they're building it. and whether AI actually does make sense everywhere, or is just going to ruin everything in the process. That's the AI miniseries on the Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts. This series is presented by MongoDB. During Larry Driscoll's interrogation, Texas Ranger James Holland introduced the idea of, quote, military mode, where someone might black out, saying to Larry Driscoll, quote, Like a warrior in Afghanistan who gets shot and gets into a bad battle and kills a bunch of people.
47:16Later, James Holland comes back to these ideas. Has anything ever happened like this before where you blacked out and you got into military mode and you had to defend yourself? No.
47:30You remember this. And you know that you remember it. James Holland continued to ask Larry Driscoll for specifics about the murder. At one point he said, let's get this, go through it, just tell us.
47:53Then all I did was take her and put her in a trash sack and just go to the body. You're asking questions, but you need to tell us what happened. Well, that's what I'm trying to do, but I keep putting the guesswork in it. What did you do when she was dead in your vehicle? Left the scene. Alright, then what did you do? Go down the interstate.
48:25I guess I take the bag out of the van and throw it off the side of the bridge. Alright, then what? Then I get in my bed, boy, and I leave and go home.
48:41You ever think about it afterwards? No. You sorry about what happened? Yeah, I'm sorry that it all happened. Here's what happened five minutes after that. So you got to tell the truth. Right. You know, I mean, the truth is more important than anything. Because I don't think I did any of it, to be honest. It's what I'm thinking. Oh, my God. But. But you know you did. I guess I, yeah, I guess I did. Hey, Larry.
49:15I'm just not totally. I know you're not totally. Ended, ended what's going on here. Right.
49:25I'm just trying to figure out why I can't picture everything. Picture it. when you're sitting there crying you're picturing it I'm saying first time and the second time you're picturing because you know what no one bends over just like that I told you I've been teaching this stuff for years and years and years and one of the best the best at this all right no one does that unless they're sorry about what happened and they did it no one
49:56I'm just getting picture myself doing that but you know you did it correct
50:03I had to, if I just corroborated everything. Not I had to, but you know you did it, right? Are you sorry about what happened? Yes, sir. All right. I know it's hard, all right? Larry Driscoll was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the murder of Bobby Sue Hill. Maurice Shema interviewed him in prison when he was almost four years into his sentence. So on the one hand, Larry Driscoll says, I was just desperate, basically, to get out of the room and be done with this. And so I just told him what he wanted to hear so that he would let me go. At other moments, though, Driscoll made it sound like he really did believe for a moment that he had had a kind of fugue state blackout while he had killed this woman.
50:51He, out of nowhere during our interview, mentioned to me that he had been in the U.S. Air Force and that there had been a tragic accident at the base where he was stationed and that he had to handle the remains of his fellow soldiers, you know, body parts, limbs and such. And that this was deeply traumatic to him and has stuck in his mind. And he thinks that basically when he was shown pictures of the victim of Bobby Sue Hill, it kind of evoked that trauma for him and led him down this path of confessing to a crime while in the back of his mind, believing that possibly he had done it. though he told me that even at the depths of the moment when he was confessing to this crime, there was a kind of a niggling in the back of his head saying, well, I still don't really know if I did this.
51:38I don't know if I really could have been possible. And I got the sense that Larry was still really kind of reckoning with that. The Innocence Project of Texas has been working on his case. Early last year, they arranged for DNA from the crime scene to be tested. They're still waiting to hear results. And last year, after serving over five years in prison, Larry Driscoll was released on parole. James Holland has never said anything on the record about Larry Driscoll's case. Maurice Shema and his colleagues at the Marshall Project have been looking into various approaches to interrogation and what kind of alternatives there are.
52:21Around 2010, the Obama administration started issuing grants to researchers to sort of study interrogation techniques in a more thorough way. Part of this was spurred by the scandals around torture at Guantanamo Bay of, you know, terror suspects. And interrogators in the FBI and the CIA were looking for better ways to get information from terror suspects without torture. And eventually some of these techniques started to percolate and they're starting to be adopted by some civilian police departments throughout the United States. These techniques also have emerged in Canada and in England where some of the elements of the re-technique, specifically lying to suspects, has long been banned.
53:11They don't allow detectives to do that in these other countries. So under these new styles of interrogation, the emphasis is on building a rapport with the suspect, making them feel comfortable, and then trying to get them talking. Unlike the read technique, where the interrogator talks a lot. Maurice says letting the suspect do most of the talking can be a better way to determine if they are lying or not. If you're lying, it can be very hard to maintain the lie, the narrative, the false narrative in a compelling way, especially when you're asked to add detail to it and keep that detail straight.
53:50So in some of these newer interrogation methods, the police will ask the suspect to describe the events in question backwards, because it's hard to describe those events backwards and keep your story straight. And what you see in some of these newer style interrogations is that you don't necessarily even get a full confession, but you You get enough admissions that it really helps the prosecutor build a compelling case against the defendant, even without that full confession. Part of this is about better ways to get confessions, but it's also, part of it is better ways to build cases so that you don't even need a confession.
54:28And there's really, I think now, a tension in police detective circles around the best way to handle these cases. You have the new guard and you have the old guard, and the old guard is still using Reed's style techniques. Reed is still training people. You can Google the Reed Technique and find dozens of YouTube videos that teach interrogators how to do it. And the Reed Technique folks have taken in some of the lessons of these decades of false confessions and are warning detectives not to lie unless as a last resort. But, you know, old habits really do die hard in this case. And I think there's still a lot of allure for detectives of the kind of old school Hollywood pop culture style, Reed-influenced, you know, aggressive style of questioning.
55:25Maurice Chema and the Marshall Project released a six-part podcast series about James Holland and Larry Driscoll. It's called Smokescreen, Just Say You're Sorry. We'll have a link in the show notes to listen. Criminal is created by Lauren Spohr and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Robertson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, Lena Sillison, Sam Kim, and Megan Kinane. Our technical director is Rob Byers. Engineering by Russ Henry. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal, you can see them at thisiscriminal.com.
56:12If you like the show, tell a friend or leave us a review. It means a lot. We're on Facebook and Twitter at Criminal Show and Instagram at criminal underscore podcast. We're also on YouTube at youtube.com slash criminal podcast. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC. We're part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great shows at podcast.voxmedia.com. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.
56:55Support for this show comes from Odoo. Running a business is hard enough, so why make it harder with a dozen different apps that don't talk to each other? Introducing Odoo. It's the only business software you'll ever need. It's an all-in-one, fully integrated platform that makes your work easier. CRM, accounting, inventory, e-commerce, and more. And the best part? Odoo replaces multiple expensive platforms for a fraction of the cost. That's why over thousands of businesses have made the switch. So why not you? Try Odoo for free at odoo.com. That's O-D-O-O dot com. Having a smart home is a cool idea, but kind of a daunting prospect.
57:39You have to figure out which devices to buy, how to connect them all together. It's all just a lot. But for two weeks on The Vergecast, we're trying to simplify all of it. We're going to spend some time answering all of your questions about the smart home. And then we're going to go room by room through a real house, my real house, and try to figure out how to make it smart and how to make all of that smart make sense. All of that and much more on The Vergecast, wherever you get podcasts. This special series is presented by The Home Depot.
From the publisher
After a 17-hour-long interrogation, a woman confesses to a murder. But then, evidence surfaces proving that she can’t have actually done it – and that it was a false confession.
Today, we’re looking at what goes on in an interrogation room – and hear a recording from inside.
Maurice Chammah and the Marshall Project released a 6-part podcast series about James Holland and Larry Driskill – it’s called “Smoke Screen: Just Say You’re Sorry.”
Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow.
Criminal is going back on tour in February! We’ll be telling brand new stories, live on stage. You can even get meet and greet tickets to come and say hi before the show. Tickets are on sale now at thisiscriminal.com/live. We can’t wait to see you there.
Sign up for Criminal Plus to get behind-the-scenes bonus episodes of Criminal, ad-free listening of all of our shows, members-only merch, and more. Learn more and sign up here.
Listen back through our archives at youtube.com/criminalpodcast.
We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery.
Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.
Episode transcripts are posted on our website.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
