Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: That is the funniest thing anyone has ever said on
Speaker 2: this show, and we're going to have to I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously we've already edited it out because it's also definitely
Speaker 2: an actionable threat against what I can't believe, Gava, is
Speaker 2: that you even had their home address.
Speaker 3: Wow, what a bit you know. You learn these things
Speaker 3: when you're a doctor. It's important to know as much
Speaker 3: about someone as.
Speaker 2: You can m hopefully anyway, welcome back to part two, everybody.
Speaker 2: This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where every week
Speaker 2: we get as close to getting our guests, doctor Cavajda
Speaker 2: in trouble with the authorities as possible without actually doing
Speaker 2: it thanks to the kind of happened one of these days.
Speaker 3: Thank you for having me back, Tava. Yes, Robert, how
Speaker 3: do you?
Speaker 2: How do you feel so far talking about bitemark analysis?
Speaker 3: I think it's really interesting. I think forensic quote unquote
Speaker 3: science is a fascinating topic because it's such an important
Speaker 3: part of our legal system. And as we discussed in
Speaker 3: the first episode, if you haven't listened to it, you
Speaker 3: should go back and listen to it. Like, why are
Speaker 3: you listening to this one? What do you do? Your maniac?
Speaker 3: But I kind of dig it too, So if that's
Speaker 3: your thing, then I'm down with it. But also a
Speaker 3: short I think it's really fascinating to like see how
Speaker 3: some of these things that aren't really based in the
Speaker 3: science as I would see it and as I'm used to,
Speaker 3: how it's grown and how it's used unfortunately in these
Speaker 3: really tragic cases. And I'm assuming you probably have more
Speaker 3: of people being, you know, sent to prison for crimes
Speaker 3: that did not commit and and it's it's a really
Speaker 3: interesting time to do it too. And I don't know
Speaker 3: if you can go into this. You probably aren't, but
Speaker 3: you know, because we're O. J. Simpson died recently, and
Speaker 3: in his case, there was a lot of DNA evidence.
Speaker 3: And I'm not like an og Simpson like official by
Speaker 3: any chance. I don't know much about that case, but
Speaker 3: I know there was DNA evidence, and it seems like
Speaker 3: it was around ninety four when it was still pretty
Speaker 3: new to people, and I don't think people really knew
Speaker 3: that much about DNA evidence at the time, so I
Speaker 3: think like it could have made a pretty big difference
Speaker 3: his case, maybe if it was done now as opposed
Speaker 3: to then, for example, And that's like part of forensic
Speaker 3: science as opposed to like bitemarks, which in maybe fingerprinting,
Speaker 3: which seemed a little bit softer in that regard of science.
Speaker 3: So I think it's really fascinating. I'm not bummed out yet,
Speaker 3: although there.
Speaker 2: Are tragic there's some sad aspects. I just got sent
Speaker 2: to prison for thirty years. Who was innocent? Yeah I
Speaker 2: sound now, I sound like a fucking monster, thank.
Speaker 3: You very much.
Speaker 2: Just an innocent man.
Speaker 3: We're just innocent men like that. One mean, but I do.
Speaker 3: But but I do think it's a really interesting topic
Speaker 3: and I think it's a super important one. So I'm glad. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm glad you're doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I you know, Actually, Kava, I have I have
Speaker 2: a different opinion about the O. J. Simpson case than
Speaker 2: a lot of people. I half watched that TV show
Speaker 2: about it a few years back, and I was I
Speaker 2: was kind of fucked up at the time. But I
Speaker 2: I currently believe that Ross from Friends was the murderer.
Speaker 2: That would make sense, that would answer the way he
Speaker 2: kept saying. Juice just didn't sit right with me.
Speaker 3: Quick quick aside, Did you know that O. J. Simpson
Speaker 3: had like a prank show? Yeah? And like it was
Speaker 3: this terrible, terrible prank show made no sense. It was
Speaker 3: so silly and stupid, and like the catch line was, hey,
Speaker 3: you've been juiced, like when he come out.
Speaker 2: It's so funny, man, that's that's that's great.
Speaker 1: Robert likes to bring up that Ross from Friends played
Speaker 1: Robert Kardashian and that Ojy.
Speaker 2: One of the funniest pieces of casting ever.
Speaker 1: Because like get up, often it might be just a
Speaker 1: Roman and if the Roman Empire, was it your Roman Empire?
Speaker 2: Well, the problem is that specifically Ross from Friends shouldn't
Speaker 2: be allowed to play other people because he's always just
Speaker 2: gonna be rot You. I can't believe you as Robert
Speaker 2: Kardashian's screaming juice at your friend. I believe the guy
Speaker 2: who played OJ is OJ. He was great, but you're
Speaker 2: just You're always Ross from Friends. Now, I'm sorry, I'm not.
Speaker 2: You're a millionaire. It's fine.
Speaker 3: He's okay with it, I'm sure. Yeah, like Leonard Nimoy
Speaker 3: is okay or was okay being Spock. I think at
Speaker 3: some point he got used to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he made peace with it. Judging by the titles
Speaker 2: of his biography, you.
Speaker 1: Can't be anything else but one thing. That's what you're
Speaker 1: doing to this person to ross from friends.
Speaker 2: Yes, that's what he is, and he's a murderer. I
Speaker 2: think so.
Speaker 3: Well.
Speaker 2: We just finished our episode talking about people versus Marx,
Speaker 2: which is kind of the the this this court case
Speaker 2: that really helps to like provide the popular grounding for
Speaker 2: bitemark analysis as a thing that's real. Now, this case established.
Speaker 2: At the time that this case was adjudicated, the established
Speaker 2: practice was that scientific evidence should not be accepted into
Speaker 2: a court case unless the said evidence was generally accepted
Speaker 2: by the relevant scientific community. This was known as the
Speaker 2: Fry test. Based on the court case that established the standard. Again,
Speaker 2: we're all talking about like matters of precedent here. Bitemark analysis,
Speaker 2: like the kind performed by Veil and Levine in this
Speaker 2: case was not based on generally accepted odontological science, because
Speaker 2: why would odontologists have done this right? Like, it's not
Speaker 2: really relevant to most of like dentistry even to like
Speaker 2: trying to do this thing right. It's just there wasn't
Speaker 2: an established kind of practice around how you should do this.
Speaker 2: But an exception was made to the Fry test based
Speaker 2: on the reasoning that bitemark matching was so simple any
Speaker 2: lay juror could look at a cast of a bite
Speaker 2: and a cast of a perps teeth and tell if
Speaker 2: they matched. Because the eyeball test could tell if a
Speaker 2: bite mark matched a set of teeth, it should be
Speaker 2: admitted into court case right, And like you can see
Speaker 2: how like the stereotypical layman who's you know, dumb might
Speaker 2: buy that. But also I feel like maybe this is
Speaker 2: just a matter of like it happened at a different time,
Speaker 2: because when I read that, I want to scream inside,
Speaker 2: like no, they can't, No, they can't. Why would you
Speaker 2: think people could match a bite to a cast of teeth.
Speaker 2: That doesn't make any sense at all.
Speaker 3: Fuck you. I think our faith in people has really
Speaker 3: just gone down in general, is what I'm hearing here.
Speaker 3: And I can't disagree with it. But it does, on
Speaker 3: the surface seem very reasonable. It's like, Okay, well, this
Speaker 3: is a very simple imprint. If this person has a
Speaker 3: really weird, like shit mouth, you should line it up
Speaker 3: with these things. It seems like it would make sense.
Speaker 3: It's like to the general public, I could totally see that.
Speaker 2: I understand, like how this whole disastrous train of events
Speaker 2: like got moving right, How the momentum got built up
Speaker 2: behind it, so you know, the eyeball test. This is
Speaker 2: going to wind up being kind of like it. It's
Speaker 2: sort of a disaster that this gets established as a
Speaker 2: way to verify whether or not a new forensic science
Speaker 2: should be trusted, because it creates this very dangerous situation.
Speaker 2: After Marx, a whole host of new kinds of experts
Speaker 2: start coming forward using different kinds of pattern matching forensic
Speaker 2: techniques like matching shoe prints or tire trends or bits
Speaker 2: of hair based on visual signs. Alone, this bitemark analysis
Speaker 2: case people versus Marx, it opens the floodgates on a
Speaker 2: lot of nonsense getting introduced as forensic science. And the
Speaker 2: positive side of this is we get a shitload of
Speaker 2: TV shows based on forensic analysis. Right, this is where
Speaker 2: all of them come from, this idea that there's all
Speaker 2: these every crime scene, there's all these little clues and
Speaker 2: you can, you know, you could, any little thing can
Speaker 2: match the shoeprints. You can do this and like, none
Speaker 2: of this stuff works. It either doesn't work at all
Speaker 2: or it doesn't work as well. As the experts who
Speaker 2: make their living based on convincing you it works perfectly
Speaker 2: are going to claim and because they've now reset the
Speaker 2: standard from forensic science has to be generally accepted in
Speaker 2: the field to like, well, if it's an eyeball sort
Speaker 2: of thing, you can introduce it. You know, it looks
Speaker 2: good enough.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of like what we talked about too before,
Speaker 3: which is like I think, like in general, in terms
Speaker 3: of law, they if something's been set once, then it lasts.
Speaker 3: It's this precedent. But like, on top of that, like
Speaker 3: judges are probably more willing to allow things than to
Speaker 3: keep things out of the trial if they don't understand it.
Speaker 3: Because if someone can present a you know, convincing enough
Speaker 3: argument that sounds like they know what they're talking about,
Speaker 3: I can see why a judge would be like, oh, Okay,
Speaker 3: this guy sounds smart enough. Well we'll leave it in
Speaker 3: and the jury can do what they will with it.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: It makes me think like rewatching Star Trek the next Generation,
Speaker 2: as I'm usually doing. We're very lucky that all of
Speaker 2: those screenwriters went to Hollywood rather than decided to do this,
Speaker 2: because they could have created some technobabble bullshit that would
Speaker 2: have locked a lot of people away. Yeah, whoever was
Speaker 2: writing Jordie's dialogue could have been very dangerous in another career.
Speaker 2: This is the second show I've.
Speaker 3: Done with you where we get into the Star Trek.
Speaker 3: I feel like we should just do a whole episode
Speaker 3: on Star Trek the Next Generation.
Speaker 2: There's nothing I'd love more. But I feel like there's
Speaker 2: also a million of those shows. Look listeners, find a rich,
Speaker 2: crazy person who will pay for me to do a
Speaker 2: show on Star Trek the Next Generation, and I'll do it.
Speaker 2: But I feel like there's there's a lot of that anyway.
Speaker 2: So after Mars, the burden of proof when you're introducing
Speaker 2: science into a lot of these cases has shifted drastically.
Speaker 2: No longer do experts have to show their processes in
Speaker 2: line with an established scientific field. The burden of proof
Speaker 2: is on the defense attorney to create doubt against the
Speaker 2: claims of an expert. The successive dentists like Levine and
Speaker 2: Veil opened the floodgates to a whole host of men
Speaker 2: who read and less qualified, pushing to convict people based
Speaker 2: on analysis that is even less scientific. In the reality
Speaker 2: of bitemark analysis is that it was always questionable. Harward,
Speaker 2: the Navy man that Levine got convicted after arguing that
Speaker 2: only he could have bit Terresa Peronne was ultimately proven
Speaker 2: innocent and released after losing thirty years of his life
Speaker 2: to the criminal justice system, and a lot more people
Speaker 2: lose precious time as a result of this bullshit, sometimes
Speaker 2: all the time that they had thanks to the fountain
Speaker 2: of forensic conmen enabled by people v.
Speaker 3: Marx.
Speaker 2: Fabricant cites this infuriating story in his book Junk Science Quote.
Speaker 2: The Connecticut Supreme Court adopted the eyeball test and state v.
Speaker 2: Mark Read a rape conviction involving the use of hair microscopy,
Speaker 2: a technique that matches two hairs together through visual observation
Speaker 2: of the interior characteristics of human hair. Hair matching evidence
Speaker 2: was admissible not because it had been scientifically validated, but
Speaker 2: because jurors were free to make their own determinations as
Speaker 2: to the weight they would accord the expert's testimony and
Speaker 2: light of the photograph and their own powers of observation
Speaker 2: and comparison. Ten years later, DNA proved that the jurors
Speaker 2: powers of observation had led to Mark Reid's wrongful conviction.
Speaker 2: He was innocent. The negroid hair a racist and anachronism
Speaker 2: still used in forensics today. Match to Read was in
Speaker 2: fact the pubic hair of his accuser, the white woman
Speaker 2: who had identified Read a black man as her rapist.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's disgusting. Oh my god. Yes, that's
Speaker 3: just real bad. That's just just give me a moment.
Speaker 2: Let's all sit with that for a second.
Speaker 3: Damn it. That's so rough on so many levels.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's I mean part of why. And again,
Speaker 2: the primary reason this is bad is because a lot
Speaker 2: of innocent people are getting convicted. The other reason it's
Speaker 2: bad is because outside of these quacks doing hair matching,
Speaker 2: there are people who are really trying hard and using
Speaker 2: scientific methods to try and catch murderers and rapists, which
Speaker 2: is import And this also it makes it impossible to
Speaker 2: trust them, you know, the way that we should be
Speaker 2: able to. That's part of why that like this is
Speaker 2: so comprehensively vile. What's happened with this industry of grifters
Speaker 2: that have subsumed forensic sciences?
Speaker 3: Can I ask a question, and yeah, this is probably
Speaker 3: not something you're privy to, but do they ever in
Speaker 3: your reading or research for this, did you ever come
Speaker 3: across a case of an expert like in one of
Speaker 3: these like soft sciences here forensic sciences that was then
Speaker 3: later like asked about a case that had been overturned
Speaker 3: because of DNA and did they ever like did they
Speaker 3: still try to fight it or were they like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it was a mistake, we made a mistake. Was there
Speaker 3: any response from them?
Speaker 2: Like usually usually no response. I can't find a single
Speaker 2: case of a guy being like, oh, yeah, you know what,
Speaker 2: I horribly fucked up and my entire life has been
Speaker 2: a lie.
Speaker 3: Well, I guess And when you say it like that,
Speaker 3: I guess it makes sense why they don't do it,
Speaker 3: but like, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I you know, I don't know, because it's tough
Speaker 2: because like, again, there are real you have to if
Speaker 2: somebody is out there committing rapes and murders, they should
Speaker 2: be identified and stopped. And there are going to be
Speaker 2: different scientific techniques that are developed over time that will
Speaker 2: allow to make those kinds of identifications. And just because
Speaker 2: the people doing it are human, they will fuck up
Speaker 2: sometimes without it being them being irresponsible, just because people
Speaker 2: are imperfect, right the same way that doctors will fail
Speaker 2: to save patients who could have been saved because you know,
Speaker 2: that's just that's the reality of the world. But at
Speaker 2: the same time, when I read about cases like this
Speaker 2: with people doing this bullshit, Like you think you hear
Speaker 2: hair matching, you think like, oh, well, they're probably getting
Speaker 2: DNA from the hair and match again. No, they're looking
Speaker 2: at two hairs and saying, well, this is clearly a
Speaker 2: negroid hair. That guy should do as much prison time
Speaker 2: as the guy who got wrongfully convicted.
Speaker 3: You know, if COVID taught us nothing else, it's that
Speaker 3: you have to the people you should trust the most
Speaker 3: in terms of the expert opinions are the ones that
Speaker 3: admit when there is limitations and when there's some doubt.
Speaker 3: When anyone tells you this is the exact answer to
Speaker 3: a novel or new issue, you have to take that
Speaker 3: with a grain of salt, because nobody wants to bring
Speaker 3: on like that, that person onto their show, Like No, CNN, Fox.
Speaker 3: They don't want to bring someone onto the show that
Speaker 3: said like, well, you know, there's a lot we don't
Speaker 3: know yet, we're still trying to figure it out. They
Speaker 3: bring on the person that's like, oh, the answer to
Speaker 3: this is don't rub your eyeballs, And that's one hundred
Speaker 3: percent the way that's going to keep you from getting
Speaker 3: sick with Covid et cetera.
Speaker 2: It's the same thing that happened. You know, we just
Speaker 2: had this case where Israel struck an Iranian embassy in
Speaker 2: Syria and Iran responded by firing missiles and drones into Israel.
Speaker 2: And online when all this started, the number of people
Speaker 2: who are like, this is World War III, right, is like,
Speaker 2: you can wait. You can wait to know. Like, not
Speaker 2: that it's not important to care about this, but you
Speaker 2: sitting at home in fucking Saint Louis, Missouri, you don't
Speaker 2: need to have an opinion about what the fallout for
Speaker 2: this is going to be the night that it happens.
Speaker 2: Just give it a day or two until we know
Speaker 2: some more about what's actually happening, right, you know that's
Speaker 2: that's I I people.
Speaker 3: Sophie has a look on her face. I think I
Speaker 3: know what she's going to add here.
Speaker 4: Oh, I'm waiting to see if you'll do it.
Speaker 3: Listen, I'm not going to correct the way he says Iran.
Speaker 3: You know what, I petitioned that we now we now
Speaker 3: refer to Iran as Iran and Iranian because I love
Speaker 3: Robert that much. Okay, you hear that out there? So
Speaker 3: people are out there stop messaging, please, please please stop
Speaker 3: messaging me to correct the way Robert says Iran. I
Speaker 3: I love the way he says it. I've given up.
Speaker 2: Thank you, thank you, thank you. In response to that,
Speaker 2: I'm going to make it. I'm going to make a
Speaker 2: grand gesture that I think might be able to heal
Speaker 2: some of the damage in this world. Austin, Texas now
Speaker 2: a suburb of Tehran. Oh, I think it's a good idea.
Speaker 2: I think the tacos that are going to come out
Speaker 2: of this will be incredible.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, the food that will come out of us. Listen,
Speaker 3: you can't take the food from us. You can say
Speaker 3: a lot about us, but you can't take our food
Speaker 3: from us. And you put us in Austin, I bet
Speaker 3: you will make some magic happen.
Speaker 2: I know the kinds of barbecue science that will come
Speaker 2: out of this set still be a marriage outstanding.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: Anyway, back to bite mark analysis. So in those early publications,
Speaker 2: a bite mark analysis that before they actually got this
Speaker 2: sort of up and running as a quote unquote science,
Speaker 2: Levine and his cohorts had had acknowledged that there are
Speaker 2: issues you can't really analyze bites in soft tissue. The
Speaker 2: way that you can analyze bites in cartilage, which is
Speaker 2: why they were so excited about the Marks case, right
Speaker 2: because it was a good what's called a three dimensional
Speaker 2: bite that they could actually cast. But as soon as
Speaker 2: bite mark analysis is accepted as forensic science, they dropped
Speaker 2: the whole Well, soft tissue bite marks aren't really you
Speaker 2: can't really analyze them reliably, and just started going a
Speaker 2: hog wild with identifications. Veil, the dentist from the Marx case,
Speaker 2: testified two years later, this time as a certified member
Speaker 2: of the AAFS Forensic Odontology Branch, about a bitemark and
Speaker 2: a young murder victim's thigh. This was exactly the kind
Speaker 2: of bite that earlier had been acknowledged as a bad
Speaker 2: fit for analysis, but now the court praised the superior
Speaker 2: trustworthiness over scientific bitemark analysis rather than less reliable kinds
Speaker 2: of forensic science. The reality is that there was very
Speaker 2: little science of any kind around bite marks. Once the
Speaker 2: nucleus of forensic dentists had there any placed for themselves
Speaker 2: in the AAFS, they set up a forensic board and
Speaker 2: locked the field into a system where newbies apprenticed themselves
Speaker 2: to established physicians and the practice of bitemark analysis became
Speaker 2: a thing of wisdom handed down rather than a thing
Speaker 2: of empirical study. And part of the problem here, part
Speaker 2: of what makes this an emposts for science to develop
Speaker 2: out of this. Right, it is possible in certain cases
Speaker 2: to match teeth to a bite mark. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to say that's a thing that you could never do,
Speaker 2: but the number of cases in which you could actually
Speaker 2: do that responsibly is a tiny, tiny fraction of the
Speaker 2: number of cases that involve a bite. There's no incentive
Speaker 2: financially to be honest about that, to say this is
Speaker 2: not a good candidate for bitemark analysis. If your job
Speaker 2: is selling bitemark analysis, right, right, the thing like your
Speaker 2: financial interest is in saying every case, oh yeah, I
Speaker 2: can tell you some good stuff about that bitemark.
Speaker 3: Right. It's not like these people I imagine, you know,
Speaker 3: like there are expert witnesses in different fields of science,
Speaker 3: and there are people who come from other places and
Speaker 3: they get paid for it, and you could argue about that,
Speaker 3: but they're coming from places where they already have like
Speaker 3: jobs doing other things. They work at a university where
Speaker 3: they are like a professor and they do research, and
Speaker 3: then or there are a doctor in a case and
Speaker 3: then they have their own practice and then they're asked
Speaker 3: to do this. If your field exists solely to be
Speaker 3: an expert witness essentially, then that seems strange to me.
Speaker 3: That does seem like a bit problematic. I mean, I
Speaker 3: assume defence lawyers will use that argument, but I could
Speaker 3: see that being questionable.
Speaker 2: A lot of times they don't know to where they
Speaker 2: don't feel like they can because you know, again in
Speaker 2: their heads, like I'm just some lawyer. This is a doctor,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a It causes problems. And again we
Speaker 2: should note that like in any of these cases, forensic
Speaker 2: evidence is not the only evidence. There's other stuff going
Speaker 2: into it. But a lot of times forensic evidence is
Speaker 2: what cinches these bad convictions. And this is like acknowledged
Speaker 2: at the time by like the prosecutors and shit that like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was that bitemark analysis that got us this conviction.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So again, what you have with this kind of growing
Speaker 2: field is you've got this board at the AFS that
Speaker 2: are able to certify people as like these are the
Speaker 2: real bite mine analysts. And this becomes like once you're
Speaker 2: in that, the only way to become a bitemark analyst
Speaker 2: is to get approval from these people who are already
Speaker 2: very biased in such a way as to make this
Speaker 2: be a profitable industry. And obviously, mentorship is a necessary
Speaker 2: part of any medical field, any scientific discipline, really right,
Speaker 2: And that's not a bad thing. It's not bad that,
Speaker 2: you know, most doctors have mentors when they're younger doctors
Speaker 2: with more experienced doctors. But what you get with these
Speaker 2: forensic boards is more akin to a medieval guild than
Speaker 2: anything we would associate with modern science. There is no
Speaker 2: kind of opened peer review structure built into the field,
Speaker 2: and the only people watching out to see if people
Speaker 2: are practicing utter bunk are other people who have a
Speaker 2: vested financial interest in maintaining the reputation of their field.
Speaker 2: This becomes a problem when con men find their way
Speaker 2: into practicing bitemark analysis, and that brings me to the
Speaker 2: hideous story of Michael West, a dentist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
Speaker 2: West decided to become a bitemark specialist when he realized
Speaker 2: there was a potential fortune to be made in becoming
Speaker 2: the Amazon dot Com bite forensics at the height.
Speaker 3: Oh that's such as a terrible phrase. Terrible phrase. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, cove it.
Speaker 2: Do you know much about like conducting an autopsy and
Speaker 2: how much time that takes and stuff.
Speaker 3: I've worked on cadavers, but I've never actually been on
Speaker 3: a true full autopsy. I assumed it's a very long time.
Speaker 3: It's a long process, it's a lot to do.
Speaker 2: It is pretty involved, and so it should have seemed
Speaker 2: weird to people that at the height of his career
Speaker 2: in the early nineties, West was conducting between twelve hundred
Speaker 2: and eighteen hundred autopsies a year, And most experts will
Speaker 2: agree is a lot for a dentist, super a dentist,
Speaker 2: for a dentists, that is quite a few autopsies for
Speaker 2: a dentist.
Speaker 3: Wow, it sounded like a lot.
Speaker 4: And then I remember, also dentist.
Speaker 2: He's a dentist. Yeah, this is not a guy who
Speaker 2: is like an expert of autopsy or.
Speaker 3: Like, you know, not like a dentist in the doc
Speaker 3: holiday old West, where that meant he can be like
Speaker 3: a surgeon as well, like like a modern day Yeah.
Speaker 2: Wow, now I know what you're saying here, Kava, Are
Speaker 2: there even that many murder cases where somebody gets bitten?
Speaker 2: And the answer is no. But West developed an ingenious
Speaker 2: method for turning any run of the mill death into
Speaker 2: a homicide with bitemarks that he could match to whatever
Speaker 2: victim he was hired to look over. And I'm going
Speaker 2: to quote from journalist Radley Balco, writing for Reason dot
Speaker 2: Com describing this West's methods. Kava, you are about to
Speaker 2: have a conniption fit here quote a fluorescent black light
Speaker 2: flicks on. West is now employing a much ridiculed technique
Speaker 2: he invented for identifying bite marks, which he modestly calls
Speaker 2: the West phenomenon. He claims that by using a black
Speaker 2: light and yellow goggles, he can find bitemarks, knife serrations,
Speaker 2: and other tears and abrasions to the skin that no
Speaker 2: other expert can see.
Speaker 3: Okay, can we start by the fact that he calls
Speaker 3: it the West phenomenon a douchebag?
Speaker 2: Oh shit, Oh my god, that should get you flung
Speaker 2: into the sea.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Like naming it after yourself with this
Speaker 3: ridiculous like it has to be yellow goggles, Like he's
Speaker 3: like studied UV lighting or some shit like that. What
Speaker 3: a terrible I don't know. I don't need to know
Speaker 3: any more about him. I don't like him.
Speaker 2: Oh you're about to hear a lot more so. Once
Speaker 2: he's found these bite marks, West can have a judge
Speaker 2: compel whoever's been accused in the case and get a
Speaker 2: cast made of their teeth. Right then, he simply takes
Speaker 2: the cast and he uses it to put bite marks
Speaker 2: on the dead body, thus creating the evidence that he
Speaker 2: was hired to find. There are video tapes of him
Speaker 2: doing this during an autopsy West conducted on a twenty
Speaker 2: three month old baby named Haley olive O. Quote West's
Speaker 2: hand then enters the frame holding a plastered dental mold
Speaker 2: taken earlier that day from Jimmy Dunn, who was accused
Speaker 2: of killing this kid. Using the replica of Duncan's teeth
Speaker 2: as a weapon, West repeatedly presses and jams the front
Speaker 2: bite plate directly into Olivo's cheek. Over two minutes, he
Speaker 2: does this seventeen times. At six fifty seven, he starts
Speaker 2: dragging Duncan's mold across olive O's face, beginning near her lips,
Speaker 2: then scraping the plaster teeth down her face to her jaw.
Speaker 2: He does this for another minute. Wes's next moves to
Speaker 2: Olivo's elbow and uses the cast to impress Duncan's dentition
Speaker 2: into an old Bruce hospital record show she suffered weeks
Speaker 2: before her death. With the lights out, West continues to
Speaker 2: jam the plaster cast into the girl's cheek, elbow, in arm.
Speaker 2: Over the course of the twenty four minute video, West
Speaker 2: pushes the cast of Duncan's teeth into the girl's body
Speaker 2: at least fifty times.
Speaker 1: I know I don't usually ask you to like skip
Speaker 1: ahead for me, but can you blink twice? If it
Speaker 1: ends badly for this motherfucker?
Speaker 2: It definitely doesn't. So, I mean, it doesn't end well
Speaker 2: for him, but it doesn't end the way.
Speaker 3: It should issue him.
Speaker 2: It's should being flung into the sea.
Speaker 4: It should hoping for from from flumping.
Speaker 3: It should aim, it should This is the story to
Speaker 3: end with him tripping and falling into a bubbling cauldron
Speaker 3: of herpes.
Speaker 2: A cauldron would be.
Speaker 3: Great, Yea.
Speaker 1: The cauldron of herpes feels valid here, and that's kind
Speaker 1: of the end I was hoping for.
Speaker 4: Okay here, because I'm deeply disturbed.
Speaker 3: Real quick though, I'm sorry, someone was recording him doing this,
Speaker 3: like there's hitten.
Speaker 2: This is an autopsy. They're they're like recorded, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: and this is so, this is like it's reviewed and
Speaker 2: like this is part of what starts this guy kind
Speaker 2: of being unwound as an expert. But in the in
Speaker 2: this specific case, the footage that shows him creating bite
Speaker 2: marks in the corpse was not entered into evidence, so
Speaker 2: it had no role. In the initial trial of the
Speaker 2: mine accused of murdering Hayley, his charge was raised to
Speaker 2: capital murder, and the bite marks were cited as one
Speaker 2: of the reasons why. But in the time between his exam,
Speaker 2: between the exam West conducted and the actual trial over
Speaker 2: this death, West was discredited due to reporting around his
Speaker 2: deeply questionable methods, including this video. So the prosecution just
Speaker 2: shopped around for another dentist. They tried Lowell Levine, but
Speaker 2: he was familiar enough with west shady ass behavior to
Speaker 2: turn them down. He's like, nah, man, I'm not that dumb,
Speaker 2: Like absolutely not.
Speaker 3: Yeah, maybe shady, but not that shady. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Eventually they found a dental examiner who'd looked over photos
Speaker 2: West had taken of the fraudulent exam he'd carried out
Speaker 2: and confirmed that the defendant had left the bitemarks. Balco writes,
Speaker 2: despite West's disintegrating reputation and the fact that the bitemark
Speaker 2: evidence was derived from his work. Louisiana Fourth Judicial District
Speaker 2: Judge Charles Joyner ruled in nineteen ninety five that the
Speaker 2: video contained no exculpatory evidence favorable to the defendant, a
Speaker 2: finding hotly disputed by all the forensic specialists consulted for
Speaker 2: this article, and that therefore prosecutors didn't need to hand
Speaker 2: it over. The state maintained at first that the defense
Speaker 2: is somehow hoping to drag doctor West into this case
Speaker 2: in order to create ancillary issues for the jury, but
Speaker 2: by nineteen ninety six, prosecutors werelented and gave defense attorneys
Speaker 2: the video, but Duncan's attorneys never showed the video to
Speaker 2: their own dental examiner. This point would have become crucial,
Speaker 2: since the bite marks were the only physical evidence used
Speaker 2: to elevate Duncan from a negligent guardian to a lethal
Speaker 2: child rapist.
Speaker 3: I don't understand, though, Like okay, I have so many questions. One,
Speaker 3: did this West guy not? I mean, why would he
Speaker 3: do that knowing he was filming it? Did you think
Speaker 3: no one was going to see it?
Speaker 2: I think he thought he was explaining as he's doing
Speaker 2: it basically like I'm testing, you know, this is where
Speaker 2: I see the bite marks or whatever like.
Speaker 3: But he's making the bite marks right.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I think he thought nobody, nobody was gonna really care
Speaker 2: to check, and they didn't for a while.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 1: People that are like that level of bold feel untouchable.
Speaker 1: And I think he thought he could just get away
Speaker 1: with doing this, and it sounds like he did.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: West and the other dental examiner. There's another guy in
Speaker 2: the room with him there during that autopsy guy.
Speaker 4: An examiner guy too.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: They fall out of favor because journalists like Balco start
Speaker 2: writing about their methods. But West continued to testify as
Speaker 2: an expert until two thousand and one. What stops him
Speaker 2: being cited as it brought in an expert in court
Speaker 2: cases is that in two thousand and one, a defense
Speaker 2: lawyer decided to test him by sending him a cast
Speaker 2: of an active defendants teeth and photos of bitemarks from
Speaker 2: a closed solved homicide case. West confirmed that the dental
Speaker 2: mold matched the photos of the bite marks, so you know,
Speaker 2: basically there's an active case going on. The defense lawyer
Speaker 2: sends him a cast of the defendant in that case
Speaker 2: Keith Teeth, and then photos of bitemarks from a completely
Speaker 2: different homicide that has already been solved, and West is like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: this guy made those bite marks, and like, yeah, I.
Speaker 3: Mean, why would you believe that the defense lawyer is
Speaker 3: trying to make you look dumb and you just help them.
Speaker 3: It doesn't make this person seems it's insane to me
Speaker 3: that this person was able to do this.
Speaker 6: Well.
Speaker 3: They also it's really incompetent.
Speaker 2: What's really insane is how little the fact that he's
Speaker 2: obviously a fraud helps the people that he had helped
Speaker 2: to get convicted. In two thousand and three, the Mississippi
Speaker 2: Supreme Court held that quote just because doctor West has
Speaker 2: been wrong a lot does not mean without something more
Speaker 2: that he was wrong here in a trial for another
Speaker 2: man he'd helped to convict in Brock.
Speaker 3: It's right twice today. So is doctor West.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Jimmy Duncan, the guy convicted in the case
Speaker 2: where he's fucking dragging a bite a toothcast across a
Speaker 2: dead baby, still on death row as of twenty twenty three,
Speaker 2: And it's one of those things where like, again, there's
Speaker 2: other evidence a lot of the time, but in Duncan's case,
Speaker 2: the only physical evidence was from West right, Like, it's.
Speaker 3: So, how has that not been how? I mean, maybe
Speaker 3: this is ongoing, but like they don't how come the
Speaker 3: Innocent Project isn't working with him on that?
Speaker 2: They are?
Speaker 3: They are.
Speaker 2: It's just like this, the fact that, like something seems
Speaker 2: clearly fucked up number one, doesn't mean that you're going
Speaker 2: to get court rulings that revisit you know, those cases
Speaker 2: like it's it's just not it's a pain. It takes
Speaker 2: a lot of a lot of these a lot of
Speaker 2: people who are exonerated as a result of the projects worked.
Speaker 2: It can take years or decades, you know.
Speaker 3: Right, and he might have done the case though no
Speaker 3: other knowledge, but like you know, with with what evans,
Speaker 3: you know, if that's the only evidence, then it's highly suspect.
Speaker 2: And and you know, certainly there are a lot of
Speaker 2: cases where he matches a bite to a perp who
Speaker 2: did do the murder. But that also doesn't like he
Speaker 2: could still be lying. There's just other evidence, right, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, the cops got the right guy and they
Speaker 2: brought him in and he just agreed with you know
Speaker 2: what the cops already thought. And in that case, he
Speaker 2: was right because that guy happened to do it. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it gives you an idea, just like how fucking sketchy.
Speaker 2: A lot of this is now. One thing we should
Speaker 2: all know at this point about scientific disinformation is that
Speaker 2: if left unchecked, it spreads inevitably. Just like the sponsors
Speaker 2: to our podcast who are always spreading out there in
Speaker 2: the world.
Speaker 3: Always fantasticizing getting out there like in cancer.
Speaker 2: That's why we love them.
Speaker 3: For your money, we're back.
Speaker 2: So the fact that scientific disinformation spreads if left unchecked
Speaker 2: is why you have to fight vigorously against people who
Speaker 2: want to deny basic facts of reality for their own profit.
Speaker 2: If you ignore, say an anti vaxed doctor claiming vaccines
Speaker 2: cause autism to make a fortune for himself, in a
Speaker 2: few years you might have presidential candidates screaming about vaccine
Speaker 2: chips orf i e. Remectin in schools full of kids
Speaker 2: with whooping cough. The field of forensic science has the
Speaker 2: same issue.
Speaker 3: I would even go even further than that and say,
Speaker 3: you don't even know. It could be something even more subtle,
Speaker 3: like some doctor who says, or I'm sorry, not doctor,
Speaker 3: but some you know, famous actress says putting a jade
Speaker 3: egg in your huha helps with such and such there
Speaker 3: is Now I feel there's a direct line to that
Speaker 3: that anti VAXX president. You know now I used to
Speaker 3: not care that much. Now I do. Any bit of
Speaker 3: this misinformation can lead eventually to this cascade. Eventually you
Speaker 3: get RFK Junior like killing sim own babies. You know,
Speaker 3: this is how it happens.
Speaker 2: That the derangement, Like, yeah, it meant it's a kind,
Speaker 2: it's a kind of cancer. It acts that way at least.
Speaker 2: And for an example of just how bad it can get,
Speaker 2: I want to turn now to the story of doctor R.
Speaker 2: Pod vas Now on paper, Kava R. Pod Voss is
Speaker 2: as legit as it gets. This guy's got a PhD
Speaker 2: in forensic anthropology. He works with the University of Tennessee's
Speaker 2: world famous body farm. He even has a Ted talk,
Speaker 2: and most of that Ted talk sounds pretty reasonable to me,
Speaker 2: notably not a scientist, but it sounds good. It's a
Speaker 2: lucid look at how human decomposition is impacted by various
Speaker 2: factors and how cadabra dogs often labradors, work by smelling
Speaker 2: different chemicals that are a product of said decomposition, and
Speaker 2: then about seventy percent of the way through his ted talk,
Speaker 2: we get this.
Speaker 6: Our next step is to develop our own Labrador and
Speaker 6: the electronic version. We may not be good at a lot
Speaker 6: of things, but we can nail those acronyms. Okay. This
Speaker 6: instrument was designed specifically for two purposes, one to track
Speaker 6: the chemical plume and the second to give the operator
Speaker 6: an idea of which area has the highest concentration is
Speaker 6: where the body is is where the concentration will be
Speaker 6: the highest, and there's the plume MiG weights that moves away.
Speaker 2: So what he is selling here, and the reason he
Speaker 2: brings up an acronym is that his device that is
Speaker 2: basically a mechanical corpse sniffing dog, is called the Labrador,
Speaker 2: and the Labrador in this case is an acronym for
Speaker 2: lightweight analyzer for buried remains in decomposition, odor recognition, And
Speaker 2: to be honest, that's a pretty good acronym.
Speaker 3: Like he did a.
Speaker 2: Salad art.
Speaker 3: And they came up with something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they made it happen. The device looks like a
Speaker 2: bulky metal detector. It looks like a metal detector with
Speaker 2: extra shit glute on it. Right, if you were again,
Speaker 2: say you were doing a Star Trek episode and you
Speaker 2: needed a future metal detector. You'd get a metal detector
Speaker 2: and you'd throw some shit on it. You know, That's
Speaker 2: how this thing looks. It's yeah, anyway, his device is
Speaker 2: this is bullshit, right, But it makes sense that something
Speaker 2: like this might work. Right if a dog can sniff
Speaker 2: out of buried cadaver, and dogs can definitely do that,
Speaker 2: we should be able to somedate design a device that
Speaker 2: can fulfill the same role electronically. You know that that
Speaker 2: makes sense, and perhaps someday we will. But doctor Voss's
Speaker 2: gizmo does not use anything that we would call regular science. Instead,
Speaker 2: it functions on the principle of a divining rod. Do
Speaker 2: you know anything about divining rods or dowsing, kave.
Speaker 3: We're talking about the old old school, like dust bowls,
Speaker 3: wash fucking are Yeah, that's great, that's fucking great.
Speaker 2: If you haven't been pilled on this particular bit of esoterica.
Speaker 2: Dowsing or divining rods go back a long time, at
Speaker 2: least about five hundred years, and variations of the practice
Speaker 2: probably predate that. The basic idea is that you get
Speaker 2: either a Y shaped piece of wood or two curved
Speaker 2: copper rods, or you know, there's a couple other variants
Speaker 2: of this, and you walk around looking for water or
Speaker 2: whatever underground, and when the two rods cross or the
Speaker 2: y shape stick gets pulled down, that means that it's
Speaker 2: right below you. Right when the rod or rods move
Speaker 2: or whatever, that's a sign that you're standing above whatever
Speaker 2: you're looking for. And dowsers have claimed over the years
Speaker 2: they can find everything from underwater underground water to buried
Speaker 2: treasure to corpses. And this is done in a couple
Speaker 2: of different ways. I'm not going to labor on all
Speaker 2: of the different ways. It is generally considered officially to
Speaker 2: be a pseudoscience because repeated studies have not been able
Speaker 2: to show that dowsing is any more accurate than random chance.
Speaker 3: It seems I could be easy to prove that, yeah. Yes.
Speaker 2: The explanation for why the sticks cross or get pulled
Speaker 2: or whatever is something called the idio motor effect, and
Speaker 2: this is when suggestions, beliefs, or expectations cause unconscious muscular movements.
Speaker 2: Most people are probably broadly familiar with the concept what's
Speaker 2: happening here is not wildly different from what happens with
Speaker 2: cops and drug sniffing dogs right. While dowsing has its
Speaker 2: origins primarily in finding water, which is why it's also
Speaker 2: often called water witching. Doctor Voss is one of a
Speaker 2: number of people who think it can and should be
Speaker 2: used to find human remains. He always frames this as
Speaker 2: focused on both giving the families closure in the case
Speaker 2: of hikers who died somewhere off trail and their bodies
Speaker 2: are never found, and of course aiding in murder investigations.
Speaker 2: And before we get into this grift, and it is
Speaker 2: a grift, I want to cite one paragraph from an
Speaker 2: article on doctor Voss in Mother Jones. In June twenty
Speaker 2: twenty one, scientists from the FBI Laboratory, George Mason University,
Speaker 2: and the US Army Criminal Investigation Command conducted a controlled
Speaker 2: blind test to evaluate the ability of dowsing rods to
Speaker 2: detect buried bones. A control group of participants was asked
Speaker 2: to look at nine holes and to identify which ones
Speaker 2: they thought contained bones. A different group did the same
Speaker 2: thing using dowsing rods, which they didn't have experience using
Speaker 2: for this purpose. According to the study, the scientists determined
Speaker 2: that neither method worked. In an email exchange with Mother Jones,
Speaker 2: doctor Voss called that study useless and in his opinion, wrong,
Speaker 2: though it is matters because he gets to train a
Speaker 2: lot of cops and forensic investigators. He wrote back in
Speaker 2: his email that he teaches his students proper dowsing and
Speaker 2: the seventeen scientific prints that quote make the rods work,
Speaker 2: which took me years to find out.
Speaker 3: Oh my god. Well, if your whole grift is based
Speaker 3: on doing what a dog does but not as well,
Speaker 3: like what a what a lame grift? Like we are
Speaker 3: have dogs for that, Like, what's just.
Speaker 2: What are the scientific seventeen of them? What are those
Speaker 2: scientific principles?
Speaker 3: Yeah, the fact that he's a Ted Talk and that
Speaker 3: probably goes into that. I mean, it just goes to
Speaker 3: show that, like you not everyone who gets a Ted
Speaker 3: Talk is fucking really an expert on anything. I guess
Speaker 3: you got. I mean that's a little disappointing. Actually, I
Speaker 3: kind of assumed they'd have some level of like, you know,
Speaker 3: criteria that has you have to give a Ted Talk.
Speaker 2: You have to assume the Ted Talk booker person or
Speaker 2: whatever isn't a forensic scientist. It would be weird if
Speaker 2: they were and this guy is a forensic scientist with
Speaker 2: impressive credentials who works, who treat trains FBI agents.
Speaker 3: So what is he saying his again, it looks like
Speaker 3: a metal detector with his extra shit.
Speaker 2: To dows for corpses. He has them walk around with
Speaker 2: copper rods where there are bodies buried so that they
Speaker 2: can find them.
Speaker 3: I mean, okay, I bite, what is the I want
Speaker 3: to know, like, what is it about the dead body?
Speaker 3: What pheromone? Because you know what is true? Like for example,
Speaker 3: like there are researchers off the coast the pharallon islands
Speaker 3: here in San Francisco who study orcas when they attack sharks,
Speaker 3: and when a shark's body dies, it releases they think
Speaker 3: a certain pheromone that acts as a warning sign to
Speaker 3: other sharks to keep them away. So there is pheromones
Speaker 3: that have been theorized to be released after death. Is
Speaker 3: that what he's saying is that the body's releasing certain
Speaker 3: odors or hormones that this device is picking up.
Speaker 2: Bodies do release certain like odors that you couldn't Again,
Speaker 2: that's what like a cadaver dog is smelling, right, even
Speaker 2: if you can't like physically smell out, even smell a
Speaker 2: dead body. He's right in front of you. If it's
Speaker 2: like buried or something, dogs can find them sometimes.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: What he's doing is he's out on the body farm
Speaker 2: where they take dead bodies and they put them in
Speaker 2: various situations to see how decomposition works and also to
Speaker 2: train like investigators and stuff. And so he's walking around
Speaker 2: places where he and others no bodies are buried, and
Speaker 2: they are dowsing and eventually finding them. And what's really
Speaker 2: probably happening is a mix of they know there's a
Speaker 2: body somewhere, there's obvious signs that a body was buried,
Speaker 2: and the ideo motor effect takes care of the rest. Right,
Speaker 2: That's what I think is actually happening here. But what
Speaker 2: he is telling people is that you can dowse for corpses.
Speaker 2: And you can't. You just can't. It's not real science.
Speaker 2: But again, if it was real science, he wouldn't say
Speaker 2: I spent years figuring it out. He would say, here
Speaker 2: is all of my pure reviewed research showing why this works. Right,
Speaker 2: there would be a body of this would who people
Speaker 2: would dedicate their lives if you could walk around with
Speaker 2: copper rods and they would somehow point out dead body
Speaker 2: he's underground. Someone would dedicate their life to figuring out
Speaker 2: why that would be interesting.
Speaker 3: Yes, people would be doing it all the time, by
Speaker 3: the way, because people go on beaches looking for like
Speaker 3: loose change. Imagine how much loose change people do go
Speaker 3: dowsing a lot.
Speaker 2: So again, there's not data like to prove that this works,
Speaker 2: but it doesn't matter because Voss is an instructor at
Speaker 2: the National Forensic Laboratory in Oakridge, Tennessee. Here's how that
Speaker 2: Mother Jones reporter attended his class where he's teaching police officers,
Speaker 2: and here's how he described it. There are no official
Speaker 2: dowsing rods at hand, but that doesn't matter. You can
Speaker 2: use the flags Voss offers, bend them like you would
Speaker 2: coat hangers. Fred Ponds, a private detective from Miami with
Speaker 2: a dark mustache and beard, gets right to it. He
Speaker 2: tears the red plastic rectangles off two stakes and spaces
Speaker 2: his hands to measure about twelve inches of straight steel,
Speaker 2: then bends the remaining metal into handles, holding the stakes
Speaker 2: like six shooters. He walks over one of the suspected
Speaker 2: grave sites, the stakes cross. He does it again. They
Speaker 2: cross and again they cross. I'm not kidding, Ponce says,
Speaker 2: marveling that his di y gravefinder seems to be working.
Speaker 2: And again, reasonably we would go like, well, you're at
Speaker 2: a body farm. You know, they buried bodies around here.
Speaker 2: Most people who bury corpses probably aren't good at like
Speaker 2: hiding all of the evidence and the fact that the
Speaker 2: fact that you're trying to convince me this is real science,
Speaker 2: and you could say, literally, any metal you bend works
Speaker 2: for this, what else works that way?
Speaker 3: I don't expect I don't okay, I don't expect that much,
Speaker 3: but like we're expecting like an eighteenth century technology to
Speaker 3: help us, yeah, yeah, whatever, to help us find these
Speaker 3: these corpses. I feel like we've gone wrong. I feel
Speaker 3: like we've done We've like law enforcement's gone astray.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it might be fair to say that at this point,
Speaker 2: reasonable people, and only reasonable people listen to this podcast
Speaker 2: might say that sounds like nonsense. But doctor Voss's class
Speaker 2: is among the most loved portions of the ten week
Speaker 2: training course at the National Forensic Academy. It costs students,
Speaker 2: mostly crime scene investigators from agencies in forty nine US states,
Speaker 2: twelve thousand dollars of your tax dollars, so that's cool.
Speaker 2: The academy itself is widely respected. The Washington Post called
Speaker 2: it the Harvard of Hellish Violence. Voss's techniques are used
Speaker 2: all over the country by real law enforcement officers in
Speaker 2: spite of the fact that a lot of this is
Speaker 2: just obviously bullshit. And for evidence of that, I'd like
Speaker 2: to turn back to the Labrador, which we opened this
Speaker 2: portion of the episode, discussing that July fifth, twenty twelve.
Speaker 2: TED Talk is not one of the more more popular
Speaker 2: TED talks. It's got like fourteen thousand views at present,
Speaker 2: but the fact that Vos got a TED Talk might
Speaker 2: suggest to some people that his Labrador was a real product.
Speaker 2: As far as I can tell, it is not. The
Speaker 2: device never launched commercially. When asked about this, Doctor Voss
Speaker 2: always claims he has a patent on the device, as
Speaker 2: if that matters. Mother Jones cites Diane France, director of
Speaker 2: the Colorado Human Identification Laboratory. She notes, you can patent anything.
Speaker 2: It doesn't mean that it works, It just means the
Speaker 2: design has to be different from other products. Diane noted
Speaker 2: that she's never seen the Labrador, let alone been able
Speaker 2: to test it. Mother Jones could only find one expert
Speaker 2: who claimed to have used the device, and that expert
Speaker 2: was Michael Hadzel, president of the nonprofit Peace River Canine
Speaker 2: Search and Rescue Association from Inglewood, Florida. He claims to
Speaker 2: be field testing the device and that it has a
Speaker 2: sixty percent success rate, but did not provide any data
Speaker 2: on this whatsoever. And I will note that a guy
Speaker 2: testing a device without backup and saying it works sixty
Speaker 2: percent of the time is remarkably close to saying it
Speaker 2: works about as well as the flip of a coin.
Speaker 3: Super super bullshit aeron no error rates study again, getting
Speaker 3: back to that thing we talked about in the first
Speaker 3: episode error rates study, this is like, this is exactly
Speaker 3: the flip of a coin, and no one will ever
Speaker 3: do a study on on this because it's nonsense and
Speaker 3: there's only it's a device that doesn't exist.
Speaker 2: Obviously, as we as I've noted repeatedly, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of problems with the way that police use dogs forensically.
Speaker 2: But we know that dogs can smell this stuff, and
Speaker 2: part of how we not is we have studied their
Speaker 2: noses extensively. Like we have, there's data on how sensitive
Speaker 2: a dog's nosis. Because it's science, because people noticed dogs
Speaker 2: seemed supernaturally good at something, and rather than just saying, well,
Speaker 2: that's good enough for me, they figured out the underpinning
Speaker 2: reasons why. Because that's that's how real science is done.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: The patent application itself lists the device. Actually, this is
Speaker 2: the application I think for a successor device to the Labrador,
Speaker 2: that's the improvement on. It lists the this this corpse
Speaker 2: sniffing gadget as having two L shaped antenna that allow
Speaker 2: it to channel electromagnetic waves. In other words, he basically
Speaker 2: built a divining rod in the form factor of a
Speaker 2: metal detector.
Speaker 3: I've updated. I'm now call fairse you're gonna device.
Speaker 2: I found an analysis. One of the best write ups
Speaker 2: of this guy as a con man comes from the
Speaker 2: website PCT missing dot org. The PCT is the Pacific
Speaker 2: Crest Trail, right, this is it's the same. The Appalation
Speaker 2: Trail is kind of the other one in the US.
Speaker 2: You've got these two massive, long, continent wide trails that
Speaker 2: like for a lot of people, it's their whole life
Speaker 2: ambition to do the PCT, or to do the the
Speaker 2: the Appellation, or to do both of them, right, And
Speaker 2: because I don't know, parts of it seem appealing to me,
Speaker 2: and then I think that's how tired i'd get.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, no, God, bless them. I'm so glad
Speaker 3: somebody wants to do that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's very impressive. Obviously it can be dangerous, right,
Speaker 2: people die doing this with some regularity, not the obviously,
Speaker 2: not most people who do it. But it's not uncommon
Speaker 2: for people to go missing. And so there's this website,
Speaker 2: pct missing dot org that that both covers these missing
Speaker 2: report person's cases, and what they're doing here is kind
Speaker 2: of as journalists trying to advocate to families that are
Speaker 2: being preyed upon by doctor Voss. Quote. The full patent
Speaker 2: makes more references to divining rods, and during the Casey
Speaker 2: Anthony trial in twenty eleven, doctor Voss admitted to dowsing
Speaker 2: for graves as a hobby. Now, when I read that,
Speaker 2: I said, what the fuck? And I clicked the hyperlink
Speaker 2: on the words Casey Anthony trial, and that hyperlink took
Speaker 2: me to a Casey Anthony trial. Fancam YouTube account that
Speaker 2: includes cut up videos of doctor Voss's testimony during the
Speaker 2: Casey Anthony trial. Where he was employed by the prosecution
Speaker 2: as an expert witness when they were trying to prove
Speaker 2: that that Toddler's dead body had at one point been
Speaker 2: in the trunk of Anthony's car. So the prosecutors want
Speaker 2: Voss to show that because he could find chemical evidence
Speaker 2: of like the chemicals released by a decomposing body, that
Speaker 2: the dead kid had been in Anthony's trunk. Right, That's
Speaker 2: why they have him on.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: Here's how Mother Jones describes Voss's performance in the Case
Speaker 2: Anthony trial. Voss claimed that an air sample from the
Speaker 2: trunk revealed high levels of compounds consistent with human decomposition
Speaker 2: based on his research. An analytical chemist from Florida International
Speaker 2: University testified that Voss's testimony wasn't backed up by scientific evidence,
Speaker 2: and that many of the compounds Voss identified could have
Speaker 2: been omitted by food wrappers and other trash recovered from
Speaker 2: Anthony's trunk. Anthony was acquitted in part because of doubts
Speaker 2: about the air sample from the car. Legal experts set
Speaker 2: at the time. Now that's all fucked up and bio.
Speaker 2: Before you get into it, I don't know anything about
Speaker 2: the Casey Anthony trial. If you have a strong opinion
Speaker 2: about that. I'm not making an opinion on the verdict
Speaker 2: of that trial. What I am having an opinion on
Speaker 2: is doctor Voss's testimony during that trial, because even being.
Speaker 3: A part of it, why is this guy a part
Speaker 3: of it?
Speaker 2: I should not be in a fucking court room unless
Speaker 2: he's being charged as a con man.
Speaker 3: No matter how dumb you think things are, it's just
Speaker 3: like they get dumber, Like are their children running the courts?
Speaker 3: Why is this happening? Why is he even a part
Speaker 3: of it?
Speaker 2: He's got again, he has really good paper qualifications, but
Speaker 2: when he actually gets on the stand, it's so fucking funny.
Speaker 2: And I'm actually gonna play you a bit from this
Speaker 2: video collage of his testimony during the trial.
Speaker 6: At vas r P A. D v Ass. I think
Speaker 6: I can make in a logical non logical, but I
Speaker 6: can make a conclusion. You know, it's just another corroboration
Speaker 6: of what my nose tells me is correct.
Speaker 5: Did you do any other instrumental examinations of the carpet
Speaker 5: piece that you significant ones?
Speaker 6: I don't think I would call any. We don't know
Speaker 6: where the source is. It could have been from decomposition
Speaker 6: or it could have been from gasoline.
Speaker 5: Is they're a specific, established chemical odor signature for human decomposition,
Speaker 5: A clear and specific one to human decomposition only.
Speaker 3: I do not think.
Speaker 7: So you are not a chemist, correct, You're not an
Speaker 7: analytical chemist. Correct, you're not a biochemist.
Speaker 8: Correct, And therefore you really can't testify as to the
Speaker 8: chemistry and the makeup of things of which you have
Speaker 8: no experience.
Speaker 6: Correct, well, if I've never looked at something, Yeah, I
Speaker 6: suppose that's true to certain examines.
Speaker 7: But you do not list what you got your PhD in?
Speaker 7: Could you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury
Speaker 7: what you got your PhD in anthropology?
Speaker 6: Now that was the hearings.
Speaker 3: Now, look anthropology.
Speaker 2: Is it's so funny.
Speaker 3: I like that.
Speaker 2: That's such a good cross examination because like, look, there
Speaker 2: are actually a lot of anthropologists in forensic science, right
Speaker 2: that that there's a lot of things about anthropology. It's
Speaker 2: a discipline that are relevant, especially when you're talking about
Speaker 2: like digging up people who were murdered years ago and
Speaker 2: buried and like all that. So obviously forensic scientists are useful.
Speaker 2: What they are not is chemists. And if you are
Speaker 2: as an anthropologist, claiming to have developed this like novel
Speaker 2: technique of measuring chemicals that are specific to human decomposition.
Speaker 2: I'm going to need to see that somebody who knows
Speaker 2: chemistry professionally has been involved in that process.
Speaker 3: Backed this up. Oh my god, it's so disheartening. The
Speaker 3: thing about it that's kind of a bummer is that, like,
Speaker 3: you know, I get it if you would come across
Speaker 3: on the stand as being like really knowledgeable, authoritative, but
Speaker 3: he doesn't even seem like that. He can't even like
Speaker 3: fake it that well, like you know, gonna be a grifter,
Speaker 3: you gotta he's not even good at it.
Speaker 2: It's gotta be both that like a lot of cops
Speaker 2: are just not all that bright, and also I assume
Speaker 2: one to one he's charming enough that like he makes
Speaker 2: you feel like he knows what he's talking about, But
Speaker 2: he does not look good up on that stand.
Speaker 3: No, he does not look It's a bad grift. I
Speaker 3: don't know how it's worked at all for him.
Speaker 2: I mean, you got it's remarkable, Jesus, Yeah, he sure did.
Speaker 2: A consummate professional doctor Voss doesn't just make his money
Speaker 2: teaching CSI guys and consulting badly on court cases. He
Speaker 2: also reaches out to families who have lost loved ones.
Speaker 2: Some of these people do speak highly of him. Dlana
Speaker 2: Hall Bodmer's sister Gina, went missing in June of nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty with a man named Stephen Epperley. Her body has
Speaker 2: never been found, but Gina is sure doctor Voss located
Speaker 2: it because his device signaled a frequency he matched to
Speaker 2: her specific corpse in eight locations, which he claims means
Speaker 2: she was dismembered and buried in eight different areas. Now,
Speaker 2: Epperley had already been convicted in a rare nobody homicide.
Speaker 2: I think he's actually one of the first nobody homicides
Speaker 2: convictions in Florida. But you know, what they're looking for
Speaker 2: is like where was she buried?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And he says like, well, I found evidence she was
Speaker 2: cut up and buried in these parts, and they find
Speaker 2: some bone fragments near where he picks out, And I
Speaker 2: haven't found any confirmation that they were human. The last
Speaker 2: article I read and said they were like still being analyzed,
Speaker 2: but it seems like if they were, he would be
Speaker 2: trumpeting that. So maybe again, if you spend a lot
Speaker 2: of time in the woods, you run into a lot
Speaker 2: of bones. Sure, right, and I've definitely seen bones are
Speaker 2: I'm like, well, yeah, that could belong to It's just
Speaker 2: a little shard of bone. I can't identify what it is.
Speaker 2: I assume a doctor, a scientist of some sort could.
Speaker 3: But is he reaching out to these people directly or
Speaker 3: are they coming to him?
Speaker 2: For I think it's a mix. But a lot of
Speaker 2: times I do think he does reach out, especially if
Speaker 2: it's like a big case. He's also you know, famous
Speaker 2: enough that some people who are desperate to find their
Speaker 2: lost loved ones, you know, go to him.
Speaker 3: This is still happening. He's still doing this. This is something, Yes,
Speaker 3: this is still going.
Speaker 2: That's why that Pacific Crest Trail website is covering him,
Speaker 2: because he's been sort of preying on people who have
Speaker 2: lost loved ones on the trail.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 2: And again, I we just brought up this case. This woman, Lana,
Speaker 2: whose sister was murdered in nineteen eighty. She's clearly someone
Speaker 2: who is mourning a lost loved one and desperately hopes
Speaker 2: to get some kind of closure using what she thinks
Speaker 2: is science. Right, she also is looking to Again, this
Speaker 2: is very sad. Part of why she's working with doctor
Speaker 2: Voss is that he's kind of convinced her that they
Speaker 2: by figuring out how to use this device and using
Speaker 2: her sister's case as a case study, they could also
Speaker 2: use this thing to find abducted children, right, And this
Speaker 2: presents an opportunity to Delana where she thinks, like, maybe
Speaker 2: I can make something good come out of my sister's death.
Speaker 2: And I understand that impulse, right, But this is not science,
Speaker 2: and it's not doctor Voss isn't going to help anybody
Speaker 2: like she has been taken for a ride by him,
Speaker 2: and I mean, I think there's pretty gross of him.
Speaker 3: There's more realistic science behind the Ghostbusters proton packs than
Speaker 3: there is this device that he has, and they also
Speaker 3: look cooler and like this is and he's able to
Speaker 3: sort of use this. It's just it's I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: just it's amazing how much money you can make it
Speaker 3: in this world with a grift. It's a amazing.
Speaker 2: And what's even more amazing is doctor Voss's patented Find
Speaker 2: Your Dead loved One service, the primary sponsor of this
Speaker 2: episode of Behind the Bastards and Cava. When doctor Voss
Speaker 2: came to me and said, I want to sponsor a
Speaker 2: podcast episode on forensic science lies. I said, it seems
Speaker 2: kind of weird because we're definitely going to tear you
Speaker 2: a new one. But he paid us one hundred and
Speaker 2: seventy thousand dollars, so here's amazing.
Speaker 3: He's a swell guy.
Speaker 2: Anyway, we're back, so again, I can't blame Gina for
Speaker 2: like wanting to get something positive out of her sister's murder.
Speaker 2: But I can blame doctor Voss for, in my opinion,
Speaker 2: taking advantage of her and a lot of other grieving people.
Speaker 2: Case in point, a shitload of folks who've lost loved
Speaker 2: ones on the PCT, people like the family of David O'Sullivan,
Speaker 2: a twenty five year old from Ireland who went missing
Speaker 2: in the spring of twenty seventeen. Voss scanned for his
Speaker 2: body from a helicopter with his labrador and gave GPS
Speaker 2: coordinates to where rescuers would find the body. A mountaineer
Speaker 2: went to the coordinates and found nothing. Oh Sullivan is
Speaker 2: still missing three years later. Again, was still missing three
Speaker 2: years later.
Speaker 3: Again. If people out there listening trying to figure out
Speaker 3: what this labrador thing is, it's just like a dumb
Speaker 3: looking metal box nothing. It's a los of nothing. It's
Speaker 3: nothing like how would that? How would from working from
Speaker 3: like an inch away? I don't think it would work
Speaker 3: much less from a helicopter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, and yeah, I'm going to quote again from
Speaker 2: mother Jones here, and this is them talking to the
Speaker 2: family of David O'Sullivan. Voss cost us a lot of
Speaker 2: money and gave us false hope, which was much worse.
Speaker 2: The Lost Higer's mother, Carmelosa Lovin, wrote in an email,
Speaker 2: adding that she now doubts Voss ever found a missing person.
Speaker 2: Families are at their most vulnerable at this time, and
Speaker 2: we'll try desperate measures. Voss is such a fixture in
Speaker 2: the I Lost a loved one on the PCT community
Speaker 2: that the first startup again this website has done it
Speaker 2: right above him because they feel the need to warn
Speaker 2: people in the community about him. Because he's a fucking predator,
Speaker 2: is what some people might argue. He cites a patent file,
Speaker 2: or the guy who wrote that article in PCT missing
Speaker 2: dot Org sites a patent filing for this successor device
Speaker 2: to the Labrador, which is called the inquisitor. And I'm
Speaker 2: not really curious about what the acronym stands for But
Speaker 2: I do want to read this quote from that PCT
Speaker 2: Missing article. I've reviewed twenty seven cases Voss worked, and
Speaker 2: I can't find a single one where the inquisitor detected
Speaker 2: an actual missing person or their remains. I know of
Speaker 2: one missing hiker case in which Voss and his device
Speaker 2: walked within feet of the remains and totally missed it.
Speaker 2: We know this because the missing person was found by
Speaker 2: accident many months later, well outside the area detected by
Speaker 2: Voss and his inquisitor.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, the thing is
Speaker 3: that he does it once, you know, shame on him.
Speaker 3: He makes a living off of it, Shame on us.
Speaker 2: Right, there's a broader problem. This is a systemic issue.
Speaker 2: Now that article of that PCT missing article, which again
Speaker 2: I would not surprised that this is a community, right,
Speaker 2: that there's enough missing people, and that it's enough of
Speaker 2: a thing that folks who are particularly really into the
Speaker 2: trail do. But I was impressed at like the degree
Speaker 2: of rigor in the article that this guy put together
Speaker 2: on doctor Voss. It's really quite good. The author of
Speaker 2: that talk to doctor Monte Miller, director of Forensic DNA Experts,
Speaker 2: to provide an analysis of the patent for the Inquisitor device.
Speaker 2: Doctor Miller has a PhD in biochemistry, not anthropology, which
Speaker 2: makes him somewhat more qualified to draw conclusions on biochemistry. Quote,
Speaker 2: in a six page report, you thoroughly debunked the Inquisitor's
Speaker 2: ability to locate dead family members using your fingernail clippings.
Speaker 2: That's what Voss was advertising. You give me your fingernails,
Speaker 2: and I will find your loved one using my magical gadget.
Speaker 2: That's so right for an example of how ridiculous this is,
Speaker 2: it's hard to get DNA from fingernail clippings, right Like,
Speaker 2: it's not You could do it, but it's not easy,
Speaker 2: right Like, it's one of the more difficult things in
Speaker 2: DNA related science. You certainly cannot put your finger nail
Speaker 2: clippings in a box that then finds your son's body.
Speaker 3: That's just not real. Yeah, I don't like this guy.
Speaker 3: I mean, whenever you tell me about these grifters that
Speaker 3: are able to pull off these scams allegedly, I don't
Speaker 3: know if he listens or if he's latigonist, but like it,
Speaker 3: I have. It almost is a part of me. That's
Speaker 3: just like, that's pretty I wish I had that confidence.
Speaker 3: I wish I had this level of like confidence in
Speaker 3: my skills to be like to try and sell something
Speaker 3: like this, Like it's kind of inspiring in a weird way.
Speaker 3: I hate to admit that it is.
Speaker 2: It's awesome and like the literal sense of that word,
Speaker 2: and that you have awe at the audacity of this motherfucker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's working. He's like, he's like, yeah, he wouldn't
Speaker 3: keep doing it.
Speaker 2: He like it may not be working as well. Now
Speaker 2: that's a little unclear to me. Sources at the UT
Speaker 2: Forensic Anthropology Center say Voss is no longer associated with
Speaker 2: their department. The author of that article I cited talk
Speaker 2: to a PhD who specializes in light ar. This person
Speaker 2: described Voss as predatory. To date, there are no scientific
Speaker 2: studies backing at Boss's claims. A person who wrote that
Speaker 2: article claims he charges three hundred dollars an hour, plus
Speaker 2: expenses and a retainer for his services, which is deeply Again,
Speaker 2: if you if your fucking kid is missing, you'll do
Speaker 2: anything if you can be con Obviously, for his part,
Speaker 2: Boss told Mother Jones he's not out to take advantage
Speaker 2: of anybody, a statement made almost exclusively by people out
Speaker 2: to take advantage of other people. He states that his
Speaker 2: fee is minimal and that he's worked pro bono in
Speaker 2: the past, a statement wonderfully vague enough that it means
Speaker 2: almost nothing. He does note that he also operates with
Speaker 2: more recognized tools like cadaver dogs and chemical tests. Curious then,
Speaker 2: that he makes such a point about his patented body
Speaker 2: stiffing machine that no one can seem to prove has
Speaker 2: been studied in any kind of objective, repeatable way. Eric Bartling,
Speaker 2: an anthropology professor who was former president of the American
Speaker 2: Bord of Forensic Anthropology, says Voss's services are not scientifically valid.
Speaker 2: Helen Gilking, director of the Forensic Anthropology Lab at the
Speaker 2: University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, adds part
Speaker 2: of the problem has to do that Voss doesn't belong
Speaker 2: to any of the usual organizations or societies. He's operating
Speaker 2: in a society of consumers who have been conditioned by
Speaker 2: all sorts of forensic scientific fantasy in the popular media.
Speaker 2: As a result, there is no shortage of potential victims.
Speaker 2: I don't fully agree with her, because again, he is
Speaker 2: associated with some reputable thing like organizations. He's been teaching
Speaker 2: cops the fucking body farm. It's not weird that people
Speaker 2: think he's got qualifications. Part of the issue is that
Speaker 2: this is not just a vas thing. Like the whole
Speaker 2: field of forensic science, all the different fields of forensic
Speaker 2: science are riddled with like issues in adequately determining whether
Speaker 2: or not different techniques are valid and repeatable science. This
Speaker 2: is a problem again and again. We're not even going
Speaker 2: to get into it in these episodes because there's so
Speaker 2: much else, but like, one of the big findings in
Speaker 2: the last couple of decades has been that a huge
Speaker 2: amount of what used to be called like arson analysis
Speaker 2: like burn analysis, was just wrong. People were convicted all
Speaker 2: the fucking time based on an understanding of what sort
Speaker 2: of patterns and a fire indicated arson that were not
Speaker 2: necessarily indicators of arson that could happen in totally accidental
Speaker 2: fires and fires that are started electrically. That they were
Speaker 2: like this only happens when you pour fuel right was
Speaker 2: completely bucked. People went to fucking prison for this shit.
Speaker 2: It happened. It's all over the goddamn place, and it's
Speaker 2: because once people have the idea to start doing this
Speaker 2: as a method of forensic analysis. They just start doing
Speaker 2: it in court for money, rather than building up a
Speaker 2: body of science around it first.
Speaker 3: You know, again, it comes out of like the legal
Speaker 3: system and law enforcement, as opposed to coming out of
Speaker 3: like the traditional sciences, where they come out of yeah yeah,
Speaker 3: fundamental flaws.
Speaker 2: Yeah so. And while Voss is a particularly noteworthy example
Speaker 2: of the problematic aspects of having little in the way
Speaker 2: of objective standards for any kind of practitioners forensic science,
Speaker 2: he's not nearly alone. This brings me to doctor Richard
Speaker 2: Vorder Bruges, who has used as unparalleled skill and denim
Speaker 2: identification to idea bank robber Wilburn mccreeth, who was sentenced
Speaker 2: to prison for ninety two years. Now, what identification he's
Speaker 2: matching like pants and shirts on camera, like the pattern
Speaker 2: of creases and folds in them to prove that it's
Speaker 2: the same shirt, not just like an identical because obviously
Speaker 2: a lot of people buy the same versions of the
Speaker 2: same shirt. You have to prove that, like this is
Speaker 2: the this shirt on camera is the shirt this guy owns, right,
Speaker 2: And he's doing that by like doing wrinkle analysis, which.
Speaker 3: Is like wow, awesome.
Speaker 2: It's one thing if there's a guy like rob Say
Speaker 2: a guy holds up a liquor store and you see
Speaker 2: he's wearing a certain shirt with a specific pattern, and
Speaker 2: there's three cigarette burns in the shoulder, and you find
Speaker 2: this a shirt with the same pattern and cigarette burns
Speaker 2: in the same way. That's some evidence, right, that would
Speaker 2: definitely be reasonable to introduce, right, Yeah, what he's doing
Speaker 2: is much sketchier than this. Right, look at this. There's
Speaker 2: a photograph of comparison for this bank robbery case where
Speaker 2: you can see how kind of unclear the actual clips
Speaker 2: from the bank camera are. And you can compare that
Speaker 2: with like the pictures they have of the suspect and
Speaker 2: his shirt, and it's just a bunch of like arrows
Speaker 2: pointing at nothing, Like I can't even see what they're
Speaker 2: claiming is like the unique wrinkle patterns that prove these
Speaker 2: are the same.
Speaker 3: So for listeners, what we have on the screen right
Speaker 3: now is a bunch of pictures black and white, taking
Speaker 3: from surveillance photos of like a plaid shirt. You can't
Speaker 3: really tell the color. And there is like, just like
Speaker 3: you Robert mentioned, a bunch of arrows literally pointing to
Speaker 3: it could be anything, which just random. There's random arrows
Speaker 3: sort of pointing here and there no discernible like arrangement
Speaker 3: in the concept I'm guessing here is like like, for example,
Speaker 3: my shirt right now, there's like these folds and wrinkles
Speaker 3: around my armpit, for example, Like they would check that,
Speaker 3: put an arrow there and be like this fold here
Speaker 3: is very specific, which is like, which seems pretty unreproducible
Speaker 3: to me. This, like I seems like an absolute garbage.
Speaker 4: Every guy in Pittsburgh has this shirt.
Speaker 2: It's one thing to say, you know, I've done open
Speaker 2: source analysis that has been sighted in courts and stuff, right,
Speaker 2: and like when you do it, it's stuff like, Okay, well,
Speaker 2: this person is wearing a mask, but they have an
Speaker 2: article of clothing, and there's another picture of a person
Speaker 2: who is wearing the same mask, who has the same
Speaker 2: article of clothing, and then a picture of them without
Speaker 2: the mask wearing that clothing, and you can also see
Speaker 2: evidence of like there's this part of a tattoo in
Speaker 2: the picture of the person without the mask that is
Speaker 2: present in the picture of the person with the mask,
Speaker 2: and like you know these other you know, there's a
Speaker 2: ring or something that you can see in all these
Speaker 2: other pictures, and like we can sort of suggest that
Speaker 2: this is the same person in all these pictures, because
Speaker 2: these things are really consistent, right, and there's enough of
Speaker 2: them that it would be really weird if like that.
Speaker 2: It's very unlikely that it's like not the same person, right.
Speaker 2: Whereas Bruce is just saying, he literally says, based on
Speaker 2: the photos I just showed you, there is a one
Speaker 2: in six hundred and fifty billion chance that these are
Speaker 2: different shirts.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, that's where does he get that number from?
Speaker 3: Holy hell? What a what a bold statement.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: I'm going to need to see your fucking math. I
Speaker 2: don't even know math, but I'm going to need to
Speaker 2: see you proof that. To me, it's a number calculation, bro.
Speaker 2: Pro Publican notes quote there is no body of work,
Speaker 2: at least not outside of the FBI on clothing pattern matching.
Speaker 2: There's no data available to tailing the number of identical
Speaker 2: shirts created during manufacturing runs, or how many variations an
Speaker 2: examiner should expect to find then a lot of manufactured clothes,
Speaker 2: Nor is there any specific training required to turn an
Speaker 2: FBI examiner into an expert on clothing features. From what's
Speaker 2: been obtained by Pro public La, the only requirement seems
Speaker 2: to be a functioning pair of eyes.
Speaker 4: Do they even say the brand of this shirt they're
Speaker 4: using as an example.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm sure, Yeah, I'm sure they do somewhere. But
Speaker 2: like two.
Speaker 4: Thousand and four of the Gap, everybody had that shirt.
Speaker 4: It's not a specialty shit.
Speaker 2: It's like a red plaid shirt shirt.
Speaker 4: It's a plaid collar shirt. This is not some specialty item.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ, my god. Now so desperate. We're so desperate.
Speaker 3: This is how bad it is, how bad we are
Speaker 3: at solving crimes as we are turning to stuff like this.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing stuff. The FBI has claimed in court
Speaker 2: filings that patterns of wrinkles and jeans and shirts are
Speaker 2: as unique as fingerprints, which really gives up some of
Speaker 2: the game here. Fingerprints are accepted as a flawless method
Speaker 2: of scientific identification, though, as we started these episodes by saying,
Speaker 2: they are not. So if you want to make your
Speaker 2: much sketchier tactic look acceptable, you have to tell the
Speaker 2: jury it's just as reliable as finger printing. Pro Publica continues,
Speaker 2: Like anything else, this science is prone to confirmation bias,
Speaker 2: but in these cases it's much worse. FBI image examiners
Speaker 2: aren't given control images or items to guard against this.
Speaker 2: They're only given images and the items investigators believe are evidence,
Speaker 2: so it guides examiners to inevitable conclusions. The research tends
Speaker 2: to be little more than finding ways images and items match,
Speaker 2: working backwards from the assumption that the item being examined
Speaker 2: as evidence of a criminal act. The entire body of
Speaker 2: this quote unquote wrinkle matching science rests on a twenty
Speaker 2: plus year old case involving a pair of blue gens.
Speaker 2: Let me show you the photographic evidence. Can you even
Speaker 2: see the fucking wrinkles in these pictures?
Speaker 3: Okay? So we are looking at two side by side photos,
Speaker 3: very old, grainy, black and white photos.
Speaker 4: Yea's supposed to be the same pants? Yes, okay.
Speaker 1: One is a straight leg geen that's like a stove
Speaker 1: pipe style. The other one is like almost a wide
Speaker 1: leg or a bootcut gen.
Speaker 4: What what? And there are clearly different colors.
Speaker 1: I can even tell they're different colors in black and white,
Speaker 1: and the denim print is completely different, the stitching is different,
Speaker 1: and uh.
Speaker 4: This is all bullshit.
Speaker 3: Sorry, I mean like I would. Okay, here's the thing.
Speaker 3: If there was some computer analysis that like really honed
Speaker 3: in on like a section of like the fiber, and
Speaker 3: they said, oh, you could see there there's a problem
Speaker 3: here with the stitch. Like the stitch here is a
Speaker 3: unique mess up like this is like a one in
Speaker 3: a whatever thousand chance of having a mess up like this.
Speaker 3: Then that sort of makes sense. But literally, this seems
Speaker 3: to be a science where it's like, look, the genes
Speaker 3: are wrinkled here and here and here, and these genes
Speaker 3: over here are also wrinkled in a similar sort of way.
Speaker 3: They must be the same person. Like, you know how
Speaker 3: pissed I would be if I got sentenced erroneously to
Speaker 3: jail because of this, Like it would be even worse
Speaker 3: than going to jail without doing the crime. It would
Speaker 3: be because of this I went to jail. I'd be
Speaker 3: so furious.
Speaker 4: These are costly different genes. The styles are not the same.
Speaker 1: You got street stove pipe and you've got wide leg
Speaker 1: boot cut.
Speaker 4: What the fuck are we even talking about here? This
Speaker 4: is bullshit for a lot of genes. I know what
Speaker 4: I'm talking about.
Speaker 2: I will say the good thing is that the field
Speaker 2: of wrinkle analysis is not as respected as it once was.
Speaker 4: But really, really, because it's based off of this.
Speaker 2: Okay, because the innocence projects for folks got a lot
Speaker 2: of people's convictions over turned based on like really shoddy
Speaker 2: this specifically being very shoddy science, and it's forced the
Speaker 2: Justice Department to change their requirements around this. DOJ standards
Speaker 2: now mandate that they're scientists and experts, not unequivocally claimed
Speaker 2: that fingerprints or bullets or hair analysis can determine which
Speaker 2: bullet fired a gun, or which hand left a print,
Speaker 2: or which had grew a hair quote to the exclusion
Speaker 2: of all others. This is the kind of claims that
Speaker 2: we're making about stuff like bullet analysis, wrinkle matching that like,
Speaker 2: because of my expertise, is like an FBI trained fucking
Speaker 2: wrinkle I can these are the same pants to the
Speaker 2: exclusion of all of their possibilities. They cannot say that anymore. Right,
Speaker 2: the DOJ guys, Right, people who are actually working for
Speaker 2: the Department of Justice, you know, doing forensic analysis can't.
Speaker 3: Create success more. I'm I'm so glad we got that
Speaker 3: very basic thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so at least at least that's good. So yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, there's a lot that's angry, frustrating about this today.
Speaker 2: There's more here. I wanted to go into where are
Speaker 2: aready running so long? But I do feel like I
Speaker 2: would be remiss if I didn't at least let you
Speaker 2: know about the latest bullshit forensic science that I came across,
Speaker 2: which is exciting field of nine to one to one
Speaker 2: call analysis. This is the result of a deputy police chief,
Speaker 2: Tracy Harpster, from Dayton, Ohio, who had no particular experience
Speaker 2: solving murders prior to attending a course at the FBI
Speaker 2: Academy in two thousand and four. He made a teacher
Speaker 2: there that he thought was fucking gray, and he decides
Speaker 2: to go get his master's degree at the U of Cincinnati,
Speaker 2: and his thesis involves he listens to one hundred recordings
Speaker 2: of nine to one one calls. Half are from innocent
Speaker 2: people and half are from people who were guilty of
Speaker 2: the climes crimes they were reporting. He then analyzed the
Speaker 2: calls for clues on the cues guilty people gave off. Now,
Speaker 2: this study is peer reviewed, but it is a peer
Speaker 2: reviewed it's labeled in the where it was published as
Speaker 2: exploratory research, so it's not When I say it's a
Speaker 2: peer reviewed study, that doesn't mean that a bunch of
Speaker 2: scientists to read this is a great way to determine
Speaker 2: whether or not people making a nine to one one
Speaker 2: call committed a crime. They agreed that, like, this is
Speaker 2: interesting and more research should be done, right, And in fact,
Speaker 2: one of the people who helped him with this has
Speaker 2: gone on to be like, I think what he is
Speaker 2: doing is not acceptable now because what he now does
Speaker 2: is teach cops all around the country for huge amounts
Speaker 2: of money how to tell with people are guilty based
Speaker 2: on things in nine one one calls. What kinds of things? Well,
Speaker 2: if you use the word please, you're probably guilty. In
Speaker 2: a nine one one call. If you say huh in
Speaker 2: response to a dispatcher's question, that's an indicator of guilt.
Speaker 2: If you say something like please help me, that could
Speaker 2: mean that you're guilty.
Speaker 3: Please, huh and please help me are like three of
Speaker 3: my favorite things to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's it's cool.
Speaker 3: I want to I want to.
Speaker 2: Quote from a pro publica analysis that's just fucking infuriating.
Speaker 2: This is a Colorado sheriff's deputy who asks Harpster to
Speaker 2: analyze the nine one one call of a widow suspective
Speaker 2: of murdering your husband.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: The widow said the word blood for a example, and
Speaker 2: that's a guilty indicator. Bleeding, however, is not she said
Speaker 2: somebody at different points, which shows a lack of commitment.
Speaker 2: Witnesses to a crime scene should be able to report
Speaker 2: their observations clearly. Harpster and Adams wrote, she was inappropriately
Speaker 2: polite because she said I'm sorry and thank you. She
Speaker 2: interrupted herself, which wastes valuable time and may add confusion.
Speaker 2: She tried to divert attention by saying, God, who would
Speaker 2: do this? Harpster and Adams commented, this is a curious
Speaker 2: and unexpected question.
Speaker 3: This is fucking insane. Yeah, this is like nineteen eighty
Speaker 3: four level of like.
Speaker 2: This guy, this widow gets convicted. Yeah, maybe she did it.
Speaker 2: There was other evidence, you know, but this is some
Speaker 2: of the evidence they convict her on. And that makes
Speaker 2: me very uneasy because this shit is bullcrap.
Speaker 3: Right. The whole idea that like, witnesses.
Speaker 2: To a crime scene should be able to report their
Speaker 2: observations clearly. Have you fucking met a crime scene witness?
Speaker 2: Have you watched have you talked to someone who just
Speaker 2: saw a violent committed?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 3: They're bad at doing that they're terrible, I mean understandably,
Speaker 3: so that's like what they've just experienced. I mean it
Speaker 3: would be like there's a part of me I get
Speaker 3: why all these things work because they're all fun. Like
Speaker 3: it's all fun. Like this is like, right, wouldn't it
Speaker 3: be fun to be able to detect someone's line based
Speaker 3: on like some subtle cues like that, you know, but.
Speaker 2: Cops love being able to take like a five day
Speaker 2: course and say, now it can tell it when a
Speaker 2: nine to one one call is a lie by a murderer.
Speaker 3: You know, these skills, It seems like it would be
Speaker 3: a lot of fun. I get why people like it,
Speaker 3: but like we have to take we have to learn
Speaker 3: as a country to take a step back. Just take
Speaker 3: a step back every now and then and look at
Speaker 3: what we're doing. This might not.
Speaker 2: He is taught police and continues to teach police officers.
Speaker 2: I think twenty six states at this point. Twenty researchers
Speaker 2: twenty researchers from seven federal government agencies, universities, and advocacy
Speaker 2: groups have tested his methods against other samples of nine
Speaker 2: to one one calls to see if the guilty indicators
Speaker 2: that he points out do correlate with guilt, and these
Speaker 2: studies have consistently found no relationship for most of the indicators.
Speaker 3: Oh wow.
Speaker 2: Two separate studies FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit experts warrened law
Speaker 2: enforcement officers that their results contradicted harpsters and police probably
Speaker 2: shouldn't be using this shit. Despite that, the FBI repeatedly
Speaker 2: suggests his like like recommends him as an expert in cases.
Speaker 3: So it's good, amazing, It's amazing again, no matter how
Speaker 3: dumb it seems to be, it's just these new levels
Speaker 3: of dumb that I discover.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I love it. I'm sure we'll be learning more
Speaker 2: about this guy. Pro public as seems to be, has
Speaker 2: been reporting quite a bit on him lately, So that's good. Anyway.
Speaker 2: Don't call nine one one.
Speaker 3: Really, I'm not sure I can back that one.
Speaker 1: Normally, when we do an episode and it's I can
Speaker 1: shut it off in my brain right away, because we
Speaker 1: do so much of what we do. I'm going to
Speaker 1: be mad about the gene thing for a really long time.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's good stuff. Look, folks, if there's a
Speaker 2: lesson here again, never call nine one one. Always take
Speaker 2: justice into your own hands. That's the safe way to
Speaker 2: do this, you know.
Speaker 3: Yeah, No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that.
Speaker 3: The doctor didn't say that. The doctor that's the podcast
Speaker 3: didn't say that. The reverend, the one true reverend doctor
Speaker 3: on this podcast did not say that.
Speaker 2: Mm hmm, well I don't know. Uh. What I will
Speaker 2: say is, if you call nine one one, don't use
Speaker 2: the word blood.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't say please, don't please, you mean, don't hesitate.
Speaker 3: Just start yelling at them. I guess that's the only
Speaker 3: way to do it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, atonal shrieking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there you go a.
Speaker 2: Shriek atonally and get them your address. That's it. Cool stuff.
Speaker 3: I am fantastic.
Speaker 4: I'm mad.
Speaker 2: Well, that's my job done. That was fine, everybody.
Speaker 3: That was fun.
Speaker 2: Doctor Hoda anywhere people can find you.
Speaker 3: Please listen to my podcast. I like it when people listen.
Speaker 3: I enjoy that very much. It's called the House of Pod.
Speaker 3: It is a fun medical podcast. And I know you're
Speaker 3: thinking you probably wouldn't like a medical podcast, but you will,
Speaker 3: you will, and you will listen. You will like it.
Speaker 3: I think it's a good chance you might enjoy it.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me on, and I
Speaker 3: really appreciate This is always so much fun for me.
Speaker 2: And look, folks out there, if you're a lawyer, a prosecutor,
Speaker 2: DA or whatever. I have started advertising my services as
Speaker 2: a uniquely skilled guilt science expert, which basically means you
Speaker 2: pay me fifteen hundred dollars and I'll look at a
Speaker 2: guy and go, oh, yeah, that motherfucker did it. And
Speaker 2: I'll do that in the court room. You know.
Speaker 3: So when this episode ends, can we just do a
Speaker 3: quick round of two truths and a lie and see
Speaker 3: if we can guess who's lying to lose it?
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 3: We can even do it on air too, But I
Speaker 3: really want to see if I can guess when you
Speaker 3: guys are lying.
Speaker 2: Okay, Okay, let's do it. Let's do it, Cove. That
Speaker 2: seems like a fun way to end our episode. Okay, okay,
Speaker 2: in law.
Speaker 3: Come come a little closer to the screen. I want
Speaker 3: to see if the facial micro expressions.
Speaker 2: Expressions sut me. Okay, move my window over so I'm
Speaker 2: looking directly at it.
Speaker 3: Okay, perfect, now, Robert, please tell me if you if
Speaker 3: you would, I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions
Speaker 3: and I want two of them to be true and
Speaker 3: one of them to be a lie. God, what was
Speaker 3: the name of the street you grew up on? Seeger?
Speaker 3: That's true?
Speaker 2: No, it's not. Dam absolutely a lie. All right, I
Speaker 2: don't even remember this name. I mean it actually might
Speaker 2: be you true because I have no idea what street
Speaker 2: I grew up on, Like it depends on what do
Speaker 2: you even mean by that? Like I've lived in so
Speaker 2: many places as a kid, I remember like a couple
Speaker 2: of the streets.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I guess it's not an exact science.
Speaker 2: What we're learning.
Speaker 1: You asked me a question.
Speaker 3: Okay, okay, Sophie. How many times have you seen the
Speaker 3: movie Titanic? Yeah? Look at me when you answer this
Speaker 3: that you can't look down like you're doing. That looks
Speaker 3: suspicious and I think you're lying already. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we should have asked her.
Speaker 4: I'm counting. And now are we talking ever?
Speaker 3: Or whoa my goodness? In the last year, I guess
Speaker 3: I don't know. Yeah, twice, that's obviously a lie. No
Speaker 3: one's watched that Titanic.
Speaker 4: Watched and I watched it twice. That was the truth.
Speaker 4: I would never lie to you.
Speaker 2: I would never see I thought it was a lie
Speaker 2: because I assumed you'd watched it a lot more.
Speaker 1: No, no, I thought, once in theaters and what's that home?
Speaker 1: Once in theaters on the anniversary, and it's at home.
Speaker 1: I would never lie to you. You are my friend.
Speaker 3: Okay, you're right, this is this is.
Speaker 4: Robert would lie to you to prove his friendship.
Speaker 2: Oh, just for fun, just as a bit sometimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, and uh, I am really good at
Speaker 3: detecting what people lie. Is when everyone thinks and nobody.
Speaker 2: Is yeah, nobody. Nobody's very good at it.
Speaker 3: Nobody.
Speaker 2: That part's okay, because none of human civilization would work
Speaker 2: if we were all good at telling when we were
Speaker 2: being lied to.
Speaker 1: Ye.
Speaker 2: So, so much of peace and tranquility in civilization relies
Speaker 2: upon us not catching every little lie somebody tells us.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, if you could read people's minds, it
Speaker 3: would be absolute chaos. Yeah, absolutely, things would be terrible.
Speaker 1: And tend this out, I would like to plug that.
Speaker 1: We have a new show launching momentarily on cools one Media,
Speaker 1: hosting by Jamie Loftus. It's a weekly podcast called sixteenth
Speaker 1: Minute of Fame.
Speaker 4: Look for that.
Speaker 2: Speaking of failures in the criminal justice system, Jamie still
Speaker 2: has not been brought to justice for those murders.
Speaker 3: And I even I.
Speaker 2: Forgot the name of the city I like about it,
Speaker 2: Grand Rapids.
Speaker 3: Oh, I thought it was Gary, Indiana for some reason.
Speaker 2: Gary Indiana. Maybe she did in Gary, Indiana. Next week
Speaker 2: we're our investigation into Jamie's crimes and Gary will.
Speaker 3: Have pursueddor dowsing for bodies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, get doctor Voss on the case.
Speaker 4: I don't know. I need to see all of Jamie's genes.
Speaker 2: We got to do a gene and how this Jamie?
Speaker 2: Make sure the creases don't match too much.
Speaker 4: Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 4: Or more from cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: Visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
Speaker 1: out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts.