Questionable Interrogation Tactics Wendy Drive Thru's and the Unsolved West Memphis Murders

This is Rocky Mountain cold cases. I'm Rachel, and that's Adam. I'm Adam, and that is Rachel.
Let's get the elephant out of the room here. There's an elephant in the room. This room is a mess.
It's a mess in. There's a lot happening in his room. I need to clean it.
Yeah, you do. It's a weekend. We're not going to clean it on a weekend.
No, that's a Monday project. Yeah. That's an Adam's later Adams problem.
Yeah, after I start work at 901. Oh, that's not going to happen. But I like that.
You are daring to dream. So the guy talked about a flown estate or something. A flowness, yeah.
Flow proness. Flow proness. Okay.
So like a patronus, but for flow. Okay. But anyway, he talks about how people that have their.
This is kind of interesting because I know it's not a fun fact, but it could be sort of a fun fact. I know the audience will find it fascinating. Okay.
I just watched this video on YouTube that was like, it was talking about the flow state of work. Right. And a lot of people will jump right into these routines and their morning routine, whether it be a cold shower or that sounds horrendous, or the ice plunges.
Oh, my gosh. Or you got to go work out, or you got to do your yoga, or you got to have your certain smoothie or whatever. Or you got to go do your grounding thing.
Right. And he mentions doing this a little bit when he was in Iceland or whatever, and he's given a TED talk on it. Right.
But he moves to LA, and he's working around all of these big, higher type people. Like you have, like your Jeff Bezos, your Elon musk. None of these guys are talking about their morning routines.
They get up, they wake up, and they go straight to work. Yeah. Then maybe they have some sort of routine.
They might still go do their yoga, but it's going to be later on in the day. Right. Yeah.
Anyway, it was just kind of interesting because he talks about how it has to do with, I don't know if he said dopamine or what word he used, but he said basically the same thing that you're doing to increase that flow prones or whatever Patronus state that you're in after you do, like, all your yoga and stuff, your body is already at that when you wake up. So there's no need to go do a morning routine because you've already got, like, basically, he kind of referred to it as like the ram on your computer, your computer, when it's turned off. Nothing has been being asked of it yet.
Right. But I would argue that the morning routine is not necessarily to get your body going. It's to get your mind in the right mindset.
Right. Well, and then he goes into later going, looking at some of these people, like you have Jeff Bezos, whatever, or Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk. These are these people that are highly successful.
They end up eventually very burned out because they haven't been replenishing that dopamine or whatever it is that your body needs to be in that kind of flow state. He said. So basically, you work for like an hour to 3 hours first thing in the morning, and then you go do your morning routine that you would have done later to replenish or recharge or rejuvenate your.
Yeah, it was a very interesting theory. Okay. Anyway, I don't know.
I feel like why not keep your morning routine, but then also schedule in breaks to expand on your morning routine so that you are stepping away from work tasks. Like your morning routine might be yoga, and then two or 3 hours after work doing work stuff. Now you're going on a walk, or now you're going and getting that coffee or whatever.
You know what I mean? Yeah, I don't know. My morning routine is to stumble around the house and be upset. I had to be awake and get ready as fast as possible.
Right. Well, I mean, it's interesting because I think there's so much out there that's like, in order to achieve success, you have to follow these things. And this is like, a lot of people want to copy what someone that's successful has done, but what worked for them might not work for you as an individual.
So you're saying a one size does not, in fact, fit all right. Yeah, I don't know. Anyway, that wasn't the fun fact.
That was not the fun fact, but it was just some information, I guess. No, the fun fact is our continuation of the fun fact from last week. Because I told you it was a two parter.
Right. And you said you didn't remember what part one was. Yeah, let's remind the guests because there's probably somebody that didn't catch last.
Oh, yeah, let's remind the guests. The first part was about. Remember Dave Thomas? Oh, right.
And he worked at KFC. Now I'm reminded. That's all I needed to know.
Okay, so remember, he's now left KFC because the people that owned KFC screwed him. Over some stocks. Right? Yeah.
So anyway, let's not give them too much because they had to go back and listen to that other episode that was not given too much. I just had to remind you what it was and where we're at. Yeah.
Right. He has left KFC, the first Wendy's. So he left KFC and he's opening his own Wendy's.
The first Wendy's was actually opened in 1969, so it's not as old as. I don't know. To me, it doesn't feel very old, but I guess it kind of is the square patties.
Yeah. What the heck is up with the square patties? Nobody else does square patties. Well, they're cool.
Nobody does square patties. So with that. Oh, and again, I was getting this information from the food that built America.
It's a tv show and I love it. And I missed my life calling by not being on it. Anyways, whatever.
So it allowed him to cover more area on the grill for when they were really busy. So if you think about it, the circles, everybody else does, you have some empty space on the grill. And so he did the square patty.
So you can budy them up right next to each other to cook them and get a lot more on there. Then there was the bonus of the square patty. Also is a visual where it appears like there is so much meat that it is literally spilling over the bun.
I mean, that makes sense. It does look like it's coming over the bun. Yeah.
So you're not necessarily getting more meat, but it looks. I mean, looks are a big selling point for things. No, it's true.
Having been doing photography for some time now, the images of food, like, people, they dye food images to make it look a certain way. Yeah. No, there's a whole science behind photographing food.
Okay, so in 1969, those square pattied burgers he was selling for $0.55, which sounds like a dream. However, in 1969, that was almost triple what other places were selling their burgers for.
So he was actually pretty pricey. Wow. Yeah, the burger.
Wait, how much did you say in, what? In 1960? 919. 69. How much was it? Fifty five cents.
Fifty five cents? Yes. Now, at the time, the burger was actually bigger than other restaurants, burgers. So, like, there's a rhyme and reason why you charge more.
And this included Burger King's whopper, which is supposed to be advertised as, like, a really. It's a whopper. It's really big.
Yeah. So I wouldn't say that that's necessarily true nowadays, but at the time, his was actually bigger. Did he have the triple and the double in? He did not at first, and I'm not going to lie, I wrote these notes probably two months ago, and I just can't remember, but initially he did not.
He added those in later when he was having some sales issues to give it the appearance of more of a value. Oh, I see. Yeah.
It's such an interesting thing because there's, like. And I think Wendy's is the only restaurant that does this. But you can order number one.
But number one comes in the options of single, triple, or double. And I don't know that there's really any other restaurant that's, like, their number one or whatever number on their menu gives you the option of making it a double, triple, or, like. You know what I mean? Yeah, no, I know what you mean.
Yeah. Interesting. Okay, so it's not sponsored by Wendy's at all.
I wish we were. I would be eating some Wendy's right now. All right, what do you like to get at Wendy's? What do I like to get at Wendy's? Yeah.
Usually the number one. Double or triple? I'm not fat for anyone that can't see me. I'm not fat for anyone who I'm so skinny and I'm so good.
Liking. Do they still have their spicy chicken nuggets? I don't know. I haven't eaten their chicken nuggets really, ever? They have the only edible chicken nuggets from a fast food place.
Really? Yeah, they're the only chicken nuggets I'll eat. Those are some good chicken chinas. Okay.
Anyways. Drive throughs. Drive throughs.
Big fan of drive throughs. In fact, during COVID we all needed drive throughs very badly. So drive throughs were invented in the 1970s.
However, they were just not very popular and not very well known because you usually did like a drive in, if anything, you know how Sonic had, like, the car hops and. Yeah. Yeah.
So drive through, then someone brought your food on rollerblades, right? I did not bring the food on the rollerblades. I would have. Definitely.
Yeah. Because you worked at Sonic. Yeah, I did work at Sonic.
Summer tips were amazing. Anyways, so drive throughs. McDonald's.
Didn't even have one by the 1970s. Still didn't even have one. Dave Thomas, being the genius that he is, he put one in at his restaurant in an effort to serve more customers.
However, it was only one window, and it ended up slowing things down overall. So he had all these customers coming in, walking in, like, you did. And he was like, man, we could get more if we had, like, people didn't have to get other cars.
But then, because he's making everything fresh, it's taking forever because now he's kind of added an extra line and they're not able to keep up. So the process of going through a drive through nowadays, oddly enough, this process isn't happening at Wendy's in the nowadays. But when you think about going to, like, a Burger king or a McDonald's, you pull up to the little screen and you do your order.
Then you go to the next window and you pay. Then you go to the next window, then you pick up your order, you get your food. Dave Thomas invented that? Yeah.
Really? He invented that. Um, which is super interesting because a lot of the wendy's now, when you roll up to the first window, Wendy, like, they have a board, then the window. The window is built there, but they have it, like, closed off, saying, go to the next window where you order.
Then there's a window you shouldn't stop at anymore, and then there's a pay and get your food window. Well, I don't think it helps that he died and he hasn't been here around. Enforce these rules.
It's just weird. It's just weird. It was like Dave Thomas invented this three stop system, and you don't use it anymore, but everybody else does.
Everybody else does except, I guess, chick fil a. Anyway, they're on their own. Okay.
So the idea behind this was because he needed to buy more time to cook the food. So you are taking more stops, but you feel like you're making progress. So basically you're waiting for your food to be cooked once you've ordered it.
So it's not really faster, it's just buying them more time. Since Dave couldn't make the cooking process know he can only cook food so fast, he decided to redo the drive through system with what we see now with the three stops. The idea of adding more stops to a drive through was to make the customer feel like they were kept progressing through the process by getting to a new window and would get their food without realizing they waited for it.
So we came up with the idea to have the customer order at a radio order station like we do now, where the restaurant will begin cooking their order while the customer then progresses to the next window, which is where they will pay and their food is still cooking. Then they will progress to the last window to pick up their order. Okay.
Wild. Because just a second. To know the science behind it because it makes you feel you're not going to get impatient in line because you have to do steps along the way.
So it almost makes sense why they've done away with the three part system and you're paying at the window when you pick up your food because everyone is paying with a card nowadays. That's true. Back then, they were paying with cash, so you had to wait for someone to count their change or whatever and hand you back your change.
Yeah, but now it's, like, so fast. And with the technology in our debit cards or credit cards, now you can tap to pay. There's also, like, if you think further into it, there's restaurants.
I think McDonald's does it. You can pay for it on the app while you're in. Mean, it defeats the purpose of having that pay window, I guess.
So. I just. I don't know.
I just thought that was so. I think. I think it's less effective now in the way that Dave was using it, because drive thrus are everywhere.
There are way more people going through fast food restaurants. There's so many times that I've been to McDonald's and I've had to wait, like, three cars deep to just order. And then, because they do the double lanes, then you're trying to make sure that who ordered first so that I don't cut somebody off, and then you have to merge into one lane, and then it's just sitting there waiting, waiting, and then you pay, and then you wait, and then you get to the window with your food.
You know what I mean? So it no longer feels like I'm successfully progressing through the line. I'm just, dang, man, this is a long line. Yeah.
So I don't know. I feel like back then, it was probably like, once you got it running smooth, it was probably like, dude, that was so fast. Whereas now I'm just like, oh, my gosh, another line.
Yeah. That's how I feel about know fast, though. I know they have people out there taking your order.
I'm like, dude, it's two. But then I'm like, in a weird way, like, having them. I guess now I'm knowing the science behind what wendy's did is the science behind them coming out and taking the order.
So many cars back to help buy them time to cook all that food. Yeah, I think it is. Wow.
Because if they wait for you to get up to the actual window or the screen to ask for your order. Because when we're at Chickfila, we're sometimes, like, five cars away from the ordering screen, and they're taking our order. And so I think it is to buy them more time because so many people are coming through.
That makes sense. So many people are coming through. I never really thought.
It was kind of always bothered me, like, why can I not just wait till I get to the dang screen to order my food? But if it makes it so that when I roll up in the car finally. Because sometimes I'm like, this is making the line longer, but I think chick fil a is actually really pretty fast with it. Yeah.
Except for the one in Layton. That one I will not go to. It's horrendously the worst.
Riverdale has the best one, for sure, anyway. But, yeah, so that was the second part for just. It's just all these things about Dave Thomas that I didn't know.
Like, you just know that it's a wendy's and he was adopted and he named it after his. Like, all these other things. It's like.
No, Dave really understood business. He really got marketing. And so, I don't know, it's just cool.
These things that are iconic now are because of Dave. Yeah. Yeah.
Did he always use his daughter's picture or granddaughter or whatever? I honestly can't remember. Again, I wrote that thing, like, two ish months ago. Yeah.
Okay, are you ready for this week's case? Yeah. Well, too bad it's not a case. This is one of our dead ends.
No, this is one of our, like, let's learn something. One. You know how we did 911 and I can't remember that we did a different one about something.
Oh, yeah. Because I asked you earlier today about Miranda rights. Miranda rights? This is not about Miranda rights.
Did you just pull this up? Wow. But I should look into this. This one again, I wrote probably, like, two months ago or whatever.
So hopefully I remember enough of the random fill in questions that you asked me. Yeah, we'll see. And hopefully I wrote this in a way that makes sense later, because sometimes I write it and I know.
I don't know, and I can tell where I've half written a thought, but I remember the full thought. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see how it goes.
So, anyways, I got this information on false confessions from. Hey, if I'm going to cut you off right now and give everyone, like, hey, please subscribe. Oh, my gosh.
To this channel or to this podcast. And, yeah, give us a rating wherever you're listening. Follow us on instagram at rmcc.
Podcast. Yes. Then that's about it.
Let's go back to the. My goodness. Okay.
So anyways, I got the information from theappeal.org, which was actually very helpful website, the innocenceproject.org, also another helpful website, NCBI.
What is this website? I'm not going to tell you the, like, we'll put them in the show notes. I'm not going to tell you the freaking URL. What is on.
Hold on. I got this from the National Library of Medicine. Oh, man.
And legalmatch.com, sciencedirect.com. And then there is an id murder mystery about the west Memphis three, which I am going to very briefly, you know, West Memphis, west Memphis three.
Okay. So false confessions, actually, there was like a lot of information, and so I actually had to kind of cut it down. It got to be too much for me, even.
I was just like, this is getting too in depth. So there's a lot more to it than what I'm going to talk about. I would say this is a good intro to it.
To false confessions. To false confessions. There are tons of studies and cases to prove that this idea of false confessions is actually a real thing, and there are actually university classes taught about it.
So, like, if you're going into criminal justice or a law or something, you're going to be taking a class on false confessions. There's so much info, they can make a whole class about it. Do attorneys learn about it? Probably.
If you're an attorney and you haven't learned about it yet, you maybe should. I would definitely think so. I feel like maybe if you're getting ready to hire an attorney for real and you're like, hey, what do you know about false confessions? And they're like, ooh, nothing.
And then you're like, okay, I need a new one. Yeah. So theappel.org
defines a false confession pretty simply and clearly as, quote, a false confession is a statement given by a person that incriminates them in a crime they did not commit, unquote. Yeah. Pretty simple, succinct right there.
Yes. Okay. What I think is funny, too, is we were watching, I can't remember what it was earlier today before we went to dinner, buried in love or something, I think.
But what's funny is we were watching the interrogation, and I was like, something's not right about this interrogation, knowing the next episode was going to be false confession. Okay. Yeah.
Because it was about, I don't know what her name was, but the girl that had the baby that she buried in her backyard. Right. But what happened is the anthropologist person was like, oh, I believe that these bones have been burned.
Tells this to the prosecuting attorney before they go in to do this interrogation thing with her. So they asked her 17 times, did you try and burn your baby? And what's crazy is eventually, I don't know if it was, like, out of fear or what, that she was, like, maybe they want to know that I was trying to do the right thing if the right thing is trying to cremate my baby or whatever. And so she confessed to trying to burn a baby remains.
But then later, that anthropologist was like, I don't know for sure if those really are burn marks. And the crazy part was the judge put. What's that order? Gag order.
Yeah, a gag order on the event. So even though she came back and redacted her burn statement or whatever, it wasn't open to the public for another, like, while. Yeah.
Anyways. Anyway, so I'm not saying that girl's whole confession was false. I'm saying there were some things in there that I was like, hold on.
We haven't even finished that show, so we don't even know what's going on. So don't quote us or tell us what we don't know anyways. Okay, so then, according to the innocenceproject.org,
do you know what the innocence project is? No. It's a group of attorneys who, for free, they get tons of cases sent to them, and they'll vet the cases and decide which ones they think are viable to win, where they think somebody genuinely was wrongly convicted, and they'll try to overturn that conviction for free. Oh, yeah.
That's called a what? Innocence project. Innocence project. So, according to the innocenceproject.org,
quote, research shows that false confessions can take place due to law enforcement's use of intimidation, force, coercive tactics, isolation during interrogations, deceptive methods that include lying about evidence, and more. An innocent person may also falsely confess because of increased stress, mental exhaustion, promises of lenient sentences, or challenges with understanding their constitutional rights, unquote. This kind of came up.
We were talking about this a little bit when we were watching that documentary or whatever that it was about. The police were kind of like a woman had been sexually assaulted. I think there was even a case of a man that had been.
But these people had been sexually assaulted, and they were like, oh, you're falsely accusing or trying to do a false reporting thing. And then the guy was like, it was sad because the detectives were like, it turned around and they were interrogating this person. That was trying to report a sexual assault.
And then they were like, oh, maybe I did. And it was like, what do you call a false. False confession? Yeah, a false confession.
Anyway. Yeah. So their website also states that people who falsely confess are interrogated for up to 16 hours on average.
Can you imagine, like, you're being brought in from police and for 16 hours you're in a room with them. Yeah. Multiple, like three people.
But yeah, they keep rotating in and out. Yeah. And you're just there tired, exhausted, confused and scared and all the things, you know what I mean? Yeah.
At that point that turns into, like, I don't know, that turns into a stressful environment and you're going to break and tell them whatever they want to hear. They want to hear. Exactly.
So I found that same statistics on several other articles as well. For example, in an article called the science based pathways to understanding false confessions and wrongful convictions, it is noted that the longer an individual is questioned, the more likely a false confession will happen. Says, quote, in a survey of us police officers that estimated length of interrogation in criminal cases ranged between 1.6
hours and 4.21 hours, in contrast to proven cases of false confessions, with an average of 16.3 hours of questioning, unquote.
Okay, that could. So the normal length is between one and a half to four and a half hours. But proven false confessing cases interrogation lasted about 16 hours.
And they complain that they are not spending their time, or our time could be better spent doing other things. And it's like you're spending 16 hours in a room. That's our state tax dollars or whatever.
And that's just an average. Some people are in there longer because that's just the average, right? Yeah. Don't tell me our time could be better well spent.
And then. Yeah. So in an article from Science Direct, it discussed three types of false confessions.
The first is a voluntary confession where the confession is, quote, given without any external pressure from police, unquote. Okay. They just go in, they're just like, hey, I killed that girl.
This happens for several reasons, such as notoriety, mental clout. I want to get famous. Mental illness where they get real life confused with fantasy.
You're got to be mentally ill to even try and do it out of clout, or it's to protect others. So your son actually killed somebody, and so you go in and say, I did it, knowing you only have like ten years left to live and your son has like 40. I don't know if that makes adds up.
But anyway, they did cite a famous case of when Charles Lindbergh's baby was kidnapped back in 1932, an estimated 200 people confessed to it. Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. Okay, so the second type. Hey, by the way, I did it, too.
Just kidding. You were so alive in 1932. Just kidding.
So the second type of false confession is coerced, compliant. So this is when the person being questioned will confess in order to escape the interrogation and or to get access to a promised or implied reward. The article says, quote, in these cases, the confession is an act of decision making, compliance by a suspect who privately knows that he or she is truly innocent, unquote.
So this is, I think, seen a lot when interrogators are like, look, if you just tell us what happened, you just tell us what really happened, we'll make sure that you won't spend the rest of your life in jail. And you've just been freaking interrogated for 16 hours, and they're not believing you when you over and over and over again, tell them, I didn't do this. And now they're putting the thought into your head that, oh, my gosh, I could get life in prison.
Maybe I will make something up so I can leave this stupid interrogation room and not spend my life in prison for something I didn't do. In some instances. Can you not be? Or is this just when people find themselves caught and get pulled into an interrogation room without an attorney? Or should your attorney be in the interrogation room? Or, how does that work? I didn't look into that.
I've never been in trouble that far to get that way. I would say a lot of this, I would say, happens when there's no attorney. They haven't asked for one, or they did ask for one and their Miranda rights were violated and they weren't given one because an attorney is going to tell you to shut up.
Yeah. Okay. So then the third type is coerced internalization.
This happens when the individual being questioned eventually starts to believe they committed the crime. They've just drilled into you for 16 hours. I know you did it.
I know you did it. Where you're starting to think maybe I did do it. Especially if all you've seen is these four walls and this tiny desk and a chair.
Yes. So I think the term gaslighting is thrown around way too loosely. Like, people are just like, well, they gaslighting me.
They're gaslighting me. I'm like, are they, though? But to me, this type of false interrogation actually does sound like police are gaslighting people into a confession. Gaslighting makes you really question your sanity.
Your reality is what you're seeing and thinking and feeling actually true. And so when police have you for so long and talk to you for so long that you're now going, oh, my gosh, maybe I did do this. Maybe 16 hours in a room, you're going to lose touch with reality.
Yeah. To me, that's probably way closer to true gaslighting than what people typically think, because people are like, well, to me, they're almost saying when somebody lies to them that they're gaslighting you. And I'm like, that's not gaslighting.
That's just they lied to you. Get over it. The article.
Does the government get whack for real? We're going to use your tax dollars for. Anyway. The article cites a case where an 18 year old came home to find his mother murdered.
He called police and was then questioned for 24 hours. During the interrogation, they led him to believe he did the crime and just didn't remember doing it. In the end, he signed a written confession until two years later, when there was enough evidence to prove that the 18 year old could not have killed his mother.
And it's usually these people that are in such a traumatic state where it's like, my mom's dead, and it's like, did you do it? Did you do it? Did you do it? We know you did it. We know you. Just tell us how you did it.
Did you get a knife? We know that you got a knife. Yeah. And you're like, the only person that I ever trusted is gone.
Maybe. Yeah. I don't know if that's the case for this guy, but, yeah.
So the article also lists two theorized factors that increase the risk of a false confession. Two factors that they theorize puts you more at risk to be someone who falsely confesses. One, no attorney.
I'm just kidding. For reals. So the first one is the suspect doesn't have a clear memory of what happened, which is known, documented.
Like, we know that in times of crisis and trauma, your memory is not working 100%. We know that. So everybody kind of, to me, falls into this aspect.
I mean, even in the best of times, my memory is not awesome. My sister can attest to that. Unless you pulled it out on video or you pulled it out on camera or whatever.
Yeah. The other is that if you are an easily manipulated person and the presentation. Yeah.
You're easily manipulated with the presentation of false evidence. So police are allowed to lie to you. And if you're already someone who's easily manipulated and they're claiming, I saw you.
I have video of you doing this. You're more likely to be like, well, oh, my gosh, they have video. I must have done it.
I know you have the facts on stuff, but I would say even argue, not even just easily manipulated. But if you're not a confident person, if you don't have the confidence to stick up for yourself, and this happens within all walks of life, you kind of can get taken advantage of, whether it's business, work, whatever. If you're not confident to be like, hey, boss, I need a raise, or whatever, but if you're not confident enough to tell that prosecuting attorney, no, I didn't do it, take whatever you think I did and walk away with it because I didn't do it.
But I mean, it'd be so scary, too, because you're being accused of murder. Yeah, you can go to jail forever. It's not like you're not going to get a raise, which is already scary enough to go and approach your boss about that stuff, but now the consequences are so bigger.
Yeah. Okay, so according to the appeal police interrogators, you're not going to get raised if you go to jail for real. Sorry.
Police interrogators are trained using a method called the read technique. When they bring someone in for questioning, they will conduct what is called a behavior analysis interview, where they ask certain questions to try and gauge if a person is lying based on body language. So this is whole different behavior analysis than I do.
This is like fidgety people. Yes. I keep looking at the corner.
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This is like fidgety people. Yes. This is that.
I keep looking at the corner, or I. Yes, there's. I wouldn't say I know a ton of it, but I know that the military trains certain people in it because they'll do, like, interrogations as well.
So I'm not going to lie. I think some of the stuff in the read technique is bullshit. Yeah, I do.
I am just a naturally anxious person. And so if I was being interrogated they would 100% think I did it because I would be flipping out. They'd be like, well, she kept, like, her eyes kept moving everywhere, and she was fidgeting so much, and.
You know what I mean? And she was crying. And it's like, yeah, because I'm terrified right now. I think there is truth to it if you know what that person is like outside of that interrogation room.
But how many officers are interrogating somebody that they actually personally know? Right. That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
And there's also, I think, a factor of it. Of how long have you been doing this? And how good are you at reading people? Because I could see that. Yeah.
Because I think there's people that can go, they're just anxious and nervous because they're being interrogated. No, he's being anxious and nervous because something's off. Yeah.
I think to an extent, yes. But I think they rely on this too heavily. Right.
And they don't use their better judgment to discern that part of it. Who knows what their better judgment is? And again, it's not all just, like, looking at body language. It's asking them certain questions.
Like, there are certain questions the retechnique teaches you to ask. An example used in the article is, quote, what do you think should happen to the person who did this? Unquote. Because they're hoping that you'll do something.
Like, okay, so let's say you legit murdered somebody and they're interrogating you about it. Okay. And they ask you, what do you think should happen to the person who did this? Shoot them in the face.
I'm sorry. Here's. I think what they are hoping will happen because you did this and you're worried you're going to get caught, and so you'll be like, well, probably serve, like, five years.
Probably revenge isn't good and we should forgive. Whereas a person who didn't do it be like, what they did is so messed up, they need to have the death penalty type of thing make an example out of them. Yes.
So based on the answer, they will watch for body language that suggests lying, such as looking away, changing posture, et cetera. The article also states that there are studies conducted that body language is not a good indicator of if someone is lying or not. Because some people are just really good liars.
Yeah. They just know how to do it and act normal. And some people are just poker face.
Awesome at it. Yeah. So it's not like a great way.
So some things that can happen in interrogation. Yeah. I mean, if I was in an interrogation room, let's say I did it, and then they're like, what should we do? This guy? And I go shoot him in the face, right? They'd be like, yeah, he didn't do it.
If they're just basing it off that type of stuff. Yeah, solely, like, based off of that, for sure. Granted, they do more, but still.
And if you're not a mentally stable person, you're going to say that anyway because you're like, I'm going to get clout. They're going to shoot me in the face. I'm going to go down on this history.
I want to be in a book. They're going to make a documentary about me. And Adam and Rachel are going to talk about on their podcast.
Yeah, I don't know. All right, so some things that can happen in an interrogation to cause a false confession in the US. I know we went to Canada last, like, what, two weeks ago? Yeah, not Newfoundland, but anyway, I know we went to Canada.
That's my. Don't. I'm not mad we went to Canada.
That's just my bad. So in the US, police are allowed to lie to suspects they are questioning. This can look like telling a suspect they know they were at the scene because they have people saying they saw them or they have their fingerprints at a scene, et cetera.
So they're placing you at the scene even though you might have been five states away. We can place you at the scene of the crime. Yeah, someone saw you.
We have your DNA. We have the back of your head on camera. For reals.
The appeal article states, quote, this particular tactic has been cited by leading false confession experts as a main driver behind innocent people confessing to crimes they never committed, unquote. So essentially, this is one of the big reasons why people are like, yeah, I guess I did it. You said you have evidence.
You have proof of me there. I guess I did it. Yeah.
Police can do what is called contamination, where they show the suspect crime scene photos or tell them information about the crime. This gives the person they are interrogating information that if they are actually innocent, they wouldn't know. But now they do know.
Right? So they're showing you pictures of a crime scene of the house that we covered for New Year's, how there were bodies upstairs and downstairs. So they're showing you pictures of that and you didn't have anything to do with this crime. And now they're saying, tell me about going upstairs.
Well, I just saw a picture of upstairs and I know for sure there's at least two bedrooms in there. So I went into the bedroom. You know what I mean? Yeah.
I saw the blood drag marks in the pictures, so I dragged a body. You're just inferring this information based on what they gave you. They're telling you information.
Yeah. And you've been in there for 16 hours, and at this point, your mind has melted. For real.
Okay. So at the time that I wrote this, I was relistening to a podcast that covers true crime documentaries. Like, they watch the documentary and they tell you about it, and you've never watched it.
I kind of want you to, but it's long, and I don't think it'll hold your attention to finish out the series. Probably not, if it's not about branding, marketing, sales. I've never asked you to watch it, but I find it very interesting.
It's a documentary called making a murder. It's controversial because there's some bias and stuff, and I just find it very interesting. So the podcast was covering each episode while I was actually researching this as well.
And so it's kind of funny because there's so much of this happening in that documentary. So I'm trying to remember what I wrote to see how much to tell you about the documentary, but basically, they are after one person for killing a woman. Whether or not he's guilty is a whole different, whole different thing.
But his nephew is under 18 at the time and has documented learning disabilities. Like, his iq is low, low. Like, he doesn't know the word inconsistent.
He doesn't know what that means. So he is being dragged into this mess as, like, a co murderer type of thing. For a second, I had to think about inconsistency.
Oh, my gosh. Because I was like, not equal. What's the definition? I'm not using Google.
Right? So it looks like, not equal with the other thing that you compare it to. Anyway. So they bring him in, and in the documentary, you actually get to see some of his interrogation.
And it is a pretty widely held belief that this kid had nothing to do with it and probably falsely confessed. It's pretty sad. And so the police used several tactics that really should not have been allowed, including questioning him as a minor without a parent.
So the police claim. Well, we asked his mom if she wanted to be there, and his mom is like, they didn't ask me at all. At all.
So you can't interrogate a minor without a parent present. But then the questions they give him are quite leading questions. They're questions that kind of feed information to him, kind of like how we just talked about.
So one thing is that they are trying to get him to say how the woman was murdered. And when he can't tell them because he genuinely doesn't know, they feed him more information. At 1.1
of the investigators asks him what happened to her head. And again, he doesn't know anything. He knows that someone's been murdered and his uncle is involved.
And now he's in here with getting questioned. And he's questioned for a long time on his own, with a low iq and no adult here to help him. And they're going, well, what happened to her head? And he's just like, I don't know.
And they're like, well, what was done to her head? And the kid, he just starts guessing. And he goes, her hair was cut. And they go, what else? She was hit.
And they already know what they're, they know what they're trying to get him to say because they have some evidence. And they ask him several more times, what happened to her head. Finally, one of the investigator goes, who shot her in the head? He had no idea she was shot.
So then when that happens, he answers and he says his uncle did, but he didn't know that before. You know what I mean? Yeah. Could you imagine? You're just there going like, I don't know.
And then when he starts guessing, well, her hair was cut. No, what happened? What else happened? She was hit. No, what else happened? Well, obviously, I don't know.
Right. But they won't leave him alone about it. So when he was answering earlier, you could tell he had no idea what happened to her head, but police told him something did happen and then straight up told him that she was shot in the head.
And even then, they don't even know for sure she was shot in the head because they never found all of her body. That's neither here nor there. Watching those interrogations.
I know for researching this, some of that interrogation of that kid is actually used when teaching about false confessions because so much poor police interviewing happened in it. What was that, your tummy hero? I think. All right.
Anyway, you need more of that energy drink. Probably not. Okay.
Probably. Okay. So another issue that can come up in an interrogation is when the crime is downplayed to not seem like it's as bad of a crime as it actually is, so the individual will feel less bad about confessing to the crime.
So the example given from appeal is, quote, did you rape her in the spur of the moment? Or did you plan it out beforehand? Unquote, because the option of I didn't rape anyone isn't presented. Did you rape her? Did you not. It's, did you do it in the spur of the moment, or did you plan it out? So then the first option carries a lower moral culpability.
Do you do it before she died or did you do it after? Right. Did you rape her before you were drunk or after you were drunk? Because raping a drunk woman is way worse than raping somebody who's coherent and tell you no one fight back. You know what I mean? They're both bad.
They're both very bad. Please don't write people. But you see what I mean? They didn't give him the option to say he didn't rape somebody.
It was, did you do it this way or this way? So, sadly, all of these techniques are allowed to legally happen. You are allowed to do all of these legally. What the hell is the point of a trial by jury if all this shit can go down beforehand? And with the way media is now, a lot of this stuff gets out.
And so then trying to find a jury of your peers who doesn't already know all this information is hard. And then also, how is, like, that's not fair because the jury is going into it with a bias of some sort, whatever they've seen or heard or whatever the media shared. Because going back, they have to do everything they can to find a jury that doesn't know all this backstory about the cases.
Oh, absolutely. But going back to the beginning when we were talking about this girl being interrogated with, did you burn your thing and the news knew everything. And then the gag order, they couldn't update anything.
And they couldn't update anything. But you had a jury or whatever. I don't know exactly how it all went down because we haven't finished it yet.
But you have potentially a jury that's like, yeah, she did it. Of course she did it. Because people make assumptions beforehand even before something's gone to trial, because going to trial could take a couple of years, but when it's first happening and you hear all these things, people make assumptions of guilt or innocence.
Yeah. So it's kind of unfair in a weird way, to. You almost need, like, a gag order on everything before it's, like, for real figured out.
Then all that stuff can be highlighted later, but then it wouldn't bleed and read. Yeah. So in Utah, custodial interrogations are supposed to be recorded, so legalmatch.com
explains the difference between a custodial interrogation and a non custodial interrogation. So, quote, in a custodial interrogation, the person is under arrest or otherwise not free to leave, whereas in a noncustodial interrogation, they can leave at any time. Another important difference is that Miranda warnings are required before a custodial interrogation, but not before a noncustodial one.
So you can ask for your lawyer at any time, but when your Miranda rights are given to you, you're, like, in an official nitty gritty interrogation, and you're going to want, for sure a lawyer. Yeah, if your Miranda rights are read to you, get a lawyer. Shut your mouth.
Just get a lawyer. Okay, so I'm going to tell you a very summarized version of a pretty well known case of false confessions. So the case is referred to as the West Memphis three.
And again, I got this information from West Memphis three and id murder mystery. Tons of information on this. This is just a summary because there's a lot going on with it.
Okay, so May 5 of 1993, in West Memphis, Arkansas. Christopher Byer's father called police around 08:00 p.m. To report that he hadn't seen his son for several hours.
A police officer came to the buyer's house, took the report, and began looking for Christopher. While police officers begins. Wow, I wrote that sentence really weird.
While the police officer begins his search for Christopher, he gets a call to a local fast food restaurant about a strange man at the restaurant who was acting weird. He had blood on him and had gone into the woman's restroom. By the time the officer arrived at the fast food place, the strange man had left.
But there was blood in the bathroom as well as a pair of sunglasses. I have a very big, bolded note in here, but it doesn't make sense to tell you what the note is right now, so I don't know why I put it there. Okay, just so you know, if I scroll back going, oh, wait, there was something.
The officer then continues his search for Christopher, and at around 930, he is called to Tod and Dana Moore's house. The moors live across the street from the buyers, and their son Michael hadn't been seen since 630. That night, Dana Moore says she had last seen her son Christopher and a third boy named Stevie Branch riding their bikes together.
So right now, the buyer's son Christopher, they can't find him. Across the street is Tod and Dana Moore and their son Michael. They don't know where he's at, but they know that Christopher and Michael are hanging out together with another friend named.
Okay. Witnesses in town said they last saw the three boys at a road that ended in a dead end and entered a wooded area. A search begins in the wooded area with police and the boy's parents.
The police initially don't find anything in the woods, so they stop the search for the night and begin the search again the next day. That day, Michael was found naked in a creek with bruising, head wounds, and his arms tied to his legs with shoelaces. They were bike riding.
Just three boys bike riding in the neighborhood. That bike riding age? Yes. Like twelve probably.
If I remember right, it was roughly twelve ish. Yes, give or take, like three years. Okay.
Now people can put that in the past. So police continued the search in the creek for the other boys and found first clothing that belonged to the boys, and then the body of Stevie, who was also naked, his face severely beaten and his hands tied to his feet. Last found was Christopher, who was naked, beaten and hands tied to his feet.
He also had genital mutilation done to him as well. After the boys were found, police returned to the fast food place to get the blood samples and sunglasses from the random guy that showed up there the day before. While looking into potential suspects, it would later come out that police lost the blood samples, so they were unable to see if it was connected to the three boys.
Okay, if you're going to lose blood samples, you're not allowed to interrogate someone for 16 hours anyway. Also, if you're losing blood samples. What are you doing? What are you doing? Yeah, how are you losing such important evidence? Police felt like the killings could be a satanic ritual, and when considering suspect, they looked into an 18 year old named Damien.
Damien Eccles. Yep. I wrote it phonetically for myself and it still didn't help.
So, Damien Eccles, they looked at Damien because Damien was like a goth kid and therefore creepy and was a little self. And he was a self proclaimed wiccan, so he's the weirdo about town. He does have a record of robbery from a year prior and he was admitted to a mental hospital.
At some point during his time in the hospital, Damien said he was going to kill his father and he tried to suck someone's blood. During a search at his home, he had notebooks of pentagons and drawings of Satan. So he sounds pretty rough around the edges.
Yeah. Don't forget what the topic of our podcast is today. Yeah.
Okay. Police looking into the case didn't think just one person killed all three kids. So when they got Damien on their radar, they looked into Damien's friends.
This is when they began to look into 16 year old Jason Baldwin. But Jason did not speak to the police. He was like, nah, nah, do not talk to me.
Police questioned Damien several times at the police station. In those interviews, Damien denied being anywhere near the woods that the boys were found in and that he was at home talking on the phone to a friend. Police asked him what he thinks the crime, and Damien what he thinks of the crime.
Remember that first thing about the raid technique? What do you think should happen to somebody who did this? So what do you think of the crime? And Damien told police that in his Wicca religion, the number three is an important number. That blood had special significance and that water was a demon like force. This raised police suspicion of Damien even more.
Yeah. A woman named Vicky said her son was friends with the three boys and has heard that Damien might be involved. She says a friend of Damien's named Jesse.
Miss Kelly, who was 17 years old and a high school dropout with a low iq, had apparently told Vicky that Damien drinks blood and does satanic rituals. Everybody's pointing their finger at Damien. Okay.
During questioning, Jesse denies having anything to do with the murder of the boys. Police give Jesse a polygraph test, which again are garbage. And he is told that he failed the polygraph test.
Remember, police are allowed to lie to you. Police questioning with Jesse becomes more intense. And according to the documentary, Jesse has been in there for 5 hours already.
Okay, that's enough. Give him a break. Maybe talk to him tomorrow.
Don't forget, Jesse's also under 18. Jesse tells police that he, Jason and Damien are all part of a cult and they like to go into the wooded area and kill animals and bring girls there to have sex. Okay.
Damien also has a low iq, so Damien might be getting things confused or not. Damien. Sorry, Jesse.
Jesse has a low iq? Yeah, Jesse. Jesse told police that he had info about the murders of the three boys. His story was that Jason invited them to go to the woods and Damien and Jesse went with Jason, probably to go do their satanic rituals.
Right. He said they got to the woods at about twelve, saw the boys in the woods and told the boys to come to them. When the boys came over, Damien hits one of the boys and began raping the boy.
Jason then hit Stevie and began raping him. Jesse said Michael then ran off and Jesse went and caught him and brought him back. Jesse then said that they tied the boys up and began hurting the boys.
He then said that he did not beat or rape the boys and ended up running off because he couldn't stand what his friends were doing to the boys. Okay. After this confession, police arrested Damien, Jason and Jesse.
Once Jesse was assigned an attorney, he tells his attorney that he didn't do anything, that the confession was a lie. His attorney, originally thinking Jesse was guilty based off of the confession, reviews Jesse's case and began to think that Jesse was actually innocent. So at first, his attorney was like, bro, you confessed to this.
I think you did do it. And then looked into it and was like, actually, maybe you didn't. One thing his attorney found was that Jesse actually passed his polygraph.
So when listening to the recorded sections of Jesse's confession, the attorney noted that when Jesse said him and his friends met up with the boys, he said it was at about noon, where police know the boys went missing in the evening because the boys'own parents had seen them well afternoon that day. So the time isn't even correct. Yeah.
Police began asking leading questions in the taped interview, asking if they had actually met up with the boys later in the day and if it had been starting to get dark when they met up with the boys. So those leading questions like, well, was it starting to get dark? Inputting that information because they know it was starting to get dark because that's when they were reported missing. So they're inputting that information to him.
Jesse began changing his answers to fit the new narrative the police were pushing toward him. They eventually got Jesse to say that they met up with the boy at six instead of noon. And when asked what was used to tie up the boys, Jesse says, a brown rope.
However, police know that the boys were tied up with shoelaces. After looking into the case, Jesse's attorney was convinced that Jesse gave a false confession. Yeah, I mean, it sounds like it.
Jesse was tried on his own and Jason and Damien were tried together. This is basically because Jesse is the one who provided a confession and wanted Jesse to testify in Jason and Damien's trial. So Jesse ended up refusing to testify in that trial.
During Jason and Damien's trial, it was revealed by the person who performed the autopsy that Christopher's genitals were mutilated while he was still alive. And those wounds were done with a serrated knife. A serrated knife was found in water that was located very near Jason's house.
However, in trial, it was brought up that any serrated knife could have been used, not necessarily the knife that was found in trial. It was also brought up that the boys would have bled a lot during their murder, but there was no blood anywhere at the scene where the boys were found. This was done to point out that Jesse's confession said everything happened in the woods, but if that were true, then there would have been blood found in the woods.
A witness from the juvenile center that Jason was held at was called to speak. This witness claims that Jason admitted to committing the murders and stated he dismembered one of the boys and sucked the blood from the boy's body. It was brought up in the trial that the motive for the murder was satanic and that the lack of blood at the scene was due to the blood being collected to be used for other satanic rituals.
In the end, Jason got life in prison without parole, Damien got the death sentence, and Jesse got life in prison. In 1996, a documentary was originally released about this case and caused people to think that maybe the West Memphis three were innocent of the murders. People started speaking out about things in the case that didn't add up.
In 2001, a law was passed that said an inmate can request DNA testing be done on evidence in their case. DNA testing had advanced quite a bit since 1993, so there was a petition for DNA testing. It took two years to get it approved.
80 items were sent to be examined. None of the west Memphis three DNA were found on any of the items tested. One of the shoelaces that was used to tie up one of the victims actually had a piece of hair on it.
The testing on the hair also does not match any of the west Memphis three. You have nothing to say to that? Well, no. I mean, yeah, kind of like, no, yeah, I don't have it.
There's like, wow, no, that's insane. There's no evidence connecting those three kids to the murder of the other kids. It's all just hearsay.
And then when they actually do test the evidence, there's still no evidence connecting everybody. Yeah, well, and it's so interesting, too, because I think it'd be easy, especially for Damien. Like, oh, this guy does, like, satanic type style rituals and fits a profile for a crazy dude who'd kill three kids.
Yeah. And I guess my mind went, because we watched that other documentary about that kind of just went into the Columbine thing, and it was basically an interview with the mom and how she's kind of like reevaluated life a little bit, and she tries to speak out against kids that maybe have suicidal tendencies. And as cool as that is, it was just kind of interesting because there was, like, a dark side of him that she didn't quite know about.
But you could easily say, well, they fit the profile. Yeah, but sometimes people just go through a phase. Well, yeah.
I mean, being the neighborhood weirdo does not make you the neighborhood killer. Right. So based on this evidence, a theory emerges that it could be a family member who killed the three boys.
They began looking at Stevie's stepfather, Terry Hobbs. Terry says the day the boys were murdered, he searched the woods around 06:00 p.m., however, at 06:00 p.m.
There wasn't a search started in the woods yet. The boys weren't even reported missing yet. Investigators get a DNA sample from Terry, which happens to match the piece of hair found on the shoelace during questioning.
Terry denies being involved in the murders. In the end, the West Memphis three entered Alfred pleas with the new DNA evidence, where they essentially pleaded guilty but does not admit to doing the crime. So an Alfred plead is, there's enough evidence to see that I'm guilty, but I didn't do it type of thing.
Yeah. An Alfred plea is a weird thing. It's technically like a guilty plea.
They're still maintaining their evidence while saying, I would be proven guilty of this. Yeah. So I guess rather than let's fully find out that I did it, did it, I'll just plead guilty or.
And let's just say that maybe I did it. Yeah. So they were offered this in an attempt to avoid doing new trials, and they guarantee to get Damien off death given they were told about the DNA and everything.
And so because there's all this DNA evidence, they could do a retrial. There's new, very important information that's come out, and so each of the boys could go through a trial again and potentially be found guilty again and everything. Or they could take these Alfred pleas so that they wouldn't have to do the trials again.
And because of how things were set up with the trials, this would allow Damien to not be on death row anymore, because, again, everybody's, even his buddies are like, damien didn't do this, and he's going to die for it. So they all. Alfred pleaded out so that Damien wouldn't stay on death row.
So they spent 18 years in prison before all three were released. The true killer has still not been found. So it's a cold case.
It is a cold case. This was, again, just a summary. There's, like, more to it.
I kind of thought it was interesting, too, that with all of this, they have all this not physical evidence, it's just rumors that these three boys were involved in the killing. But then they have this actual potential DNA match with Stevie's stepfather. And this freaking case is still not solved.
It's like, well, how did you put three people away just on rumors? And you can't put one person away with a DNA match. Yeah. So I don't know, it was just weird.
And, oh, by the way, you searched the woods before they were even, missy. Why would you search the woodsy for the even missy? That's just like an intro thing on false. The difference is he got an attorney and they didn't.
Probably. But again, this is just an intro. There's a lot more to it.
There's a lot of science to it, a lot of research articles on it. It was pretty interesting. Oh, are you sleepy? Your energy drink didn't do it for you.
Maybe I need to drink more of it. Maybe. No, it's super interesting.
I remember watching when we watched that, the faults reporting a sexual assault show, whatever that was. Oh, yeah. And they were like, there was a key phrase that they would use to turn it back on the victim.
And then the next thing you know, you're like, oh, the hell. The victim is being handcuffed. Yeah.
Which is like, oh, you're going to spend a year in prison because you falsely reported when it was like they didn't want to do the work to go find when there really was a rape and they didn't want to put in the work. So they just said, well, you're lying, and so we're arresting you for a false report. Yes.
Hurrah. And they would lie. The police would lie to them in that state because they're allowed to.
And I see how lying can be beneficial to get a confession, but clearly it can also really mess things up. This is like a big reason why people gets the death penalty, because we know that there are people in prison who are actually innocent. And so putting people on death row when you cannot be 100% certain 100% of the time, is that really ethical? Yeah.
It was such an interesting thing and it was so weird. I think that one, like, learning that whole sexual assault, being the victim deal, that one really pissed me off because it was that the detective was like, well, if I can put someone behind bars or put someone in handcuffs, I've closed the case. And it's like, it's not the same kind of case.
It's not justice. It's not because you literally took someone that came to you with a problem in you were supposed to protect in a very large state of vulnerability, and they are expecting you to do the right thing and you put them in handcuffs. Yeah, that one pissed me off.
Just for the rape type of crimes, coming forward as a victim is very difficult. There's a lot of shame with that. You're embarrassed.
And then there's the fear of, like, what if they don't believe me? And then there's all the aftermath of it, too. You have to go get an exam. You have to get a very intrusive exam for the rape kit.
And then on top of that, if they don't believe me, if you're a person of color, that risk is even higher than believing you or not believing you. And then the fact that you see these situations where the victim went to the police department or whatever, or the detective and ended up in handcuffs, and you're like, well, what just happened? Why would I report mine? I don't want that to happen to me. I don't want to go to jail for a year or whatever or be in trouble because they didn't believe me and I didn't have proof that I was telling the truth.
Because some people, they get raped and they wait a few days to tell anybody. And by then, a rape kit is not necessarily as effective with the DNA and everything. And so it's less evidence.
But that doesn't mean that the situation didn't happen. I don't know. That's a whole nother can of worms.
It is. But it also falls into the issue with police interrogations in anyway. So that's our story this week.
Find us at RMCC podcast on Instagram. If you're still listening or you have a bit more of a drive, go ahead and listen to some of the other podcasts or episodes that you haven't heard from us. And, yeah, catch you on the next one.
See you later. We're rolling. They see me rolling.
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