Speaker 1: Welcome to Unexplained Extra with me Richard McClane Smith, where
Speaker 1: for the weeks in between episodes we look at stories
Speaker 1: and ideas that, for one reason or other, didn't make
Speaker 1: it into the previous show. Last week's episode, appearing as
Speaker 1: being recounted the complex story of five young men and
Speaker 1: one young woman from Iceland who in the nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: were convicted for their involvement in the apparent murder of
Speaker 1: two men, Gudmunder and Geffner Inesen. All six individuals confessed
Speaker 1: to being responsible for the killings to one degree or another,
Speaker 1: but were later exonerated in two thousand and eighteen when
Speaker 1: it was ruled that their confessions were likely to have
Speaker 1: been false. It has long been one of the most
Speaker 1: misleading arguments in the history of criminology that no innocent
Speaker 1: person would admit to being responsible for a crime that
Speaker 1: they didn't commit. It's an idea that many of us
Speaker 1: still cling to that wouldn't be so bad, perhaps if
Speaker 1: it wasn't an idea that law enforcement professionals and in
Speaker 1: many cases judges and juries have historically believed. Also, though
Speaker 1: there are undoubtedly cases of criminal investigators forcing confessions out
Speaker 1: of suspects, or even deliberately pinning crimes on innocent individuals.
Speaker 1: What is perhaps most alarming about many cases of false
Speaker 1: confession is that the interrogators are completely unaware that it
Speaker 1: is their actions that have helped to manufacture them. In
Speaker 1: sixteen ninety two, in the village of Salem in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: seventy six year old Anne Foster, a widow from the
Speaker 1: nearby town of Andover, confessed that the devil appeared to
Speaker 1: her in the shape of a bird, and that she
Speaker 1: had the gift of striking people down with mere thoughts alone.
Speaker 1: Despite being interrogated and tortured continuously for days, Foster had
Speaker 1: steadfastly denied the accusation that she was a witch. However,
Speaker 1: when it was put to her that her own daughter,
Speaker 1: Mary Lacey Senior, who was also under investigation for witchcraft,
Speaker 1: had accused her own mother of the crimes, Foster finally
Speaker 1: confessed to being in league with the devil. Over two
Speaker 1: hundred people were arrested and wrongfully accused of witchcraft during
Speaker 1: the Salem witch Trials, perhaps one of the better known
Speaker 1: cases of false confession in relatively recent history. However, it
Speaker 1: wasn't until nineteen o six that a label was given
Speaker 1: to the phenomenon. It was in January that year in
Speaker 1: Chicago when a young man attending to his father's horse
Speaker 1: in a barn the dead body of a young woman
Speaker 1: lying face down in the muck with a copper wire
Speaker 1: twisted hard around her neck. Police quickly became suspicious of
Speaker 1: the young man who'd found the body, due simply to
Speaker 1: the fact that he looked as though he hadn't had
Speaker 1: any sleep from the previous night. After taking him to
Speaker 1: the police station for further questioning, it was put to
Speaker 1: him immediately that he had committed the murder, having first
Speaker 1: denied the accusation. As the police pressed him harder, telling
Speaker 1: him how they knew he was guilty and the way
Speaker 1: in which he'd done it, the young man eventually changed
Speaker 1: his mind and confessed to the murder. As he went
Speaker 1: on to explain it was roughly six thirty pm when
Speaker 1: he'd taken the woman into the alley and murdered her
Speaker 1: when she tried to escape, and on, he continued retelling
Speaker 1: his story numerous times, with each version becoming more detailed
Speaker 1: than the last. Believing they had their man, the police
Speaker 1: formerly charged the suspect, who was later convicted and sentenced
Speaker 1: to death for the crime. No sooner had he been convicted,
Speaker 1: the young man retracted his confession, insisting that he had
Speaker 1: no recollection of having made it in the first place.
Speaker 1: Intrigued by the case, a local doctor contacted esteemed Harvard
Speaker 1: University psychologist Hugo. Munster Burg for his opinion on the matter.
Speaker 1: Munster Burg replied that for a number of reasons, he
Speaker 1: believed the man was innocent of the crime, and that
Speaker 1: his absurd and contradictory, untrue confession, as he called it,
Speaker 1: sounded exactly like the involuntary elaboration of a suggestion put
Speaker 1: into the man's mind. When the letter made its way
Speaker 1: into the local press, Munsterburg was derided for his so
Speaker 1: called expert opinion, with his interpretation being criticized as harve
Speaker 1: it's contempt of court and nothing more than science gone crazy.
Speaker 1: A week later, despite having a cast iron alibi for
Speaker 1: the night of the murder, the young man, who many
Speaker 1: would later come to believe was entirely innocent, was executed
Speaker 1: by hanging. Are you always taking care of your family?
Speaker 1: Do you often take care of others and not yourself?
Speaker 1: Now it's time to take care of yourself. To make
Speaker 1: time for you you deserve it. Teledoc gives you access
Speaker 1: to a licensed therapist to help you get back to
Speaker 1: feeling your best, to feeling like yourself again. With teledoc,
Speaker 1: you can speak to a licensed therapist by phone or video.
Speaker 1: Therapy appointments are available seven days a week from seven
Speaker 1: am to nine pm local time. If you feel overwhelmed
Speaker 1: sometimes maybe you feel stressed or anxious, depressed or lonely,
Speaker 1: or you might be struggling with a personal or family issue,
Speaker 1: tele adoc can help. Teledoc is committed to facilitating great
Speaker 1: therapeutic matches, so they make it easy to change counselors
Speaker 1: if needed. For free. Teledoc therapy is available through most
Speaker 1: insurance or employers. Download the app or visit teledoc dot
Speaker 1: com forward slash Unexplained podcast today to get started. That's
Speaker 1: t e LA DC dot com Slash Unexplained Podcast. Despite
Speaker 1: Munsterberg's recognition of untrue confessions, it would be another ninety
Speaker 1: years before legal institutions began to take the idea seriously. Today,
Speaker 1: psychologists such as Saul Cassin from the John J. College
Speaker 1: of Criminal Justice in New York are working hard to
Speaker 1: put an end to this extraordinary phenomenon, with many believing
Speaker 1: cases such as the Ineson confessions in Iceland to be
Speaker 1: just the tip of the iceberg. In the US alone,
Speaker 1: the nonprofit organization Innocence Project, with whom Cassin works closely,
Speaker 1: has helped overturn three hundred and sixty five wrongful convictions
Speaker 1: in the last two decades, twenty five percent of which
Speaker 1: involved individuals who'd confessed to committing the crime. Much of
Speaker 1: the problem, Cassin believes stems from the Read interrogation technique,
Speaker 1: pioneered in the nineteen sixties in the United States by
Speaker 1: psychologist and apparent lie detection expert John Reid. Read's technique,
Speaker 1: variations of which have been employed by police forces throughout
Speaker 1: the world, involves first surreptitiously conducting a behavior assessment by
Speaker 1: asking various questions, often irrelevant to the case, while watching
Speaker 1: for evidence that the suspect might be lying. For years,
Speaker 1: criminal investigators have been taught that anything from slouching, crossing arms,
Speaker 1: or avoiding eye contact as wrong indicators of deception. Once
Speaker 1: interrogators have been convinced the suspect as being duplicitous, they
Speaker 1: begin to assert more pressure, continually accusing the suspect of
Speaker 1: the crime, while attempting to hone in on specific details,
Speaker 1: Any details or denials that contradict their suspicions are frequently ignored.
Speaker 1: What makes things complicated is that often this technique seems
Speaker 1: to work. However, as Cassin argues, it also leads to
Speaker 1: an unacceptably high rate of false confessions. Furthermore, having been
Speaker 1: schooled in the read technique, criminal investigators understandably believe they
Speaker 1: have become skilled in the art of determining whether a
Speaker 1: suspect is lying or not, which can have particularly disastrous consequences.
Speaker 1: To test whether this was true, Cassin enlisted the help
Speaker 1: of prisoners from Stachusetts Penitentiary to give video recorded accounts
Speaker 1: of crimes they had and hadn't committed. Cassin then showed
Speaker 1: the video to a mixture of college students and police officers.
Speaker 1: What he found was not only did the students perform better,
Speaker 1: albeit only marginally so, the police officers were far more
Speaker 1: certain of their conclusions. In effect, as Cassin put it,
Speaker 1: their training had made them less accurate and more confident.
Speaker 1: At the same time, we might think that as forensic
Speaker 1: techniques and DNA analysis become increasingly more precise at identifying
Speaker 1: a suspect that the inconvenience of false confessions will eventually
Speaker 1: become a thing of the past. Conversely, however, it seems
Speaker 1: in some cases that the perceived accuracy of modern day
Speaker 1: forensics has actually contributed to the making of a false confession,
Speaker 1: with recent evidence suggesting that suspects may confess to a
Speaker 1: crime just to escape a harrowing interrogation, hoping that material
Speaker 1: evidence will exonerate them later. In reality, it's been proven
Speaker 1: that a confession will often supersede any evidence to the contrary.
Speaker 1: More worryingly, it appears that exonerating evidence can also be
Speaker 1: corrupted when the prevailing narrative that the suspect is guilty
Speaker 1: is considered strong enough. In nineteen eighty seven, twenty four
Speaker 1: year old Barry Laffman was arrested by Pennsylvania State police
Speaker 1: and accused of raping and murdering an elderly neighbor. Lachmann,
Speaker 1: who was considered to have the intellectual capacity of a
Speaker 1: ten year old, was told the lie by police that
Speaker 1: they'd found his fingerprints at the scene. Faced with this
Speaker 1: supposedly insurmountable but entirely fabricated truth, Lachmann felt he had
Speaker 1: no other choice but to confess. When evidence was found
Speaker 1: to the contrary, such as the blood found at the
Speaker 1: scene being type A when his was type B, outlandish
Speaker 1: theories were concocted to suit the narrative. In this case,
Speaker 1: a forensic expert suggested that bacterial degradation had somehow changed
Speaker 1: the blood type from B to A. Lochman would spend
Speaker 1: sixteen years in prison until DNA evidence finally cleared him.
Speaker 1: In fact, in a study published in two thousand and sixteen,
Speaker 1: Seawan Cassin demonstrated that if juries were presented with a
Speaker 1: simple choice between DNA evidence and a confession, they would
Speaker 1: judge the case under DNA evidence. However, if a prosecutor
Speaker 1: were to offer a theory as to why the evidence
Speaker 1: might contradict the confession, the jury overwhelmingly sided with the confession. Unexplained.
Speaker 1: The book and audiobook, featuring ten stories that have never
Speaker 1: before been covered on the show, is now available to
Speaker 1: buy worldwide. You can purchase through Amazon, Barnes and Noble,
Speaker 1: and Waterstones, among other bookstores. All elements have unexplained, including
Speaker 1: the show's music, are produced by me Richard McClain smith.
Speaker 1: Please subscribe and rate the show wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: podcasts and feel free to get in touch with any
Speaker 1: thoughts or ideas regarding the stories you've heard on the show.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you have an explanation of your own you'd like
Speaker 1: to share. You can reach us online at Unexplained podcast
Speaker 1: dot com or Twitter at Unexplained Pod and Facebook at
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com orward slash Unexplained. Now. It's time to
Speaker 1: take care of yourself. To make time for you, Tell
Speaker 1: a doc gives you access to a licensed therapist to
Speaker 1: help you get back to feeling your best. Speak to
Speaker 1: a licensed therapist by phone or video anytime between seven
Speaker 1: am to nine pm local time, seven days a week.
Speaker 1: Teledoc Therapy is available through most insurance or employers. Download
Speaker 1: the app or visit teledoc dot com Forward slash Unexplained
Speaker 1: Podcast today to get started. That's teladoc dot com slash
Speaker 1: Unexplained Podcast