How Well Does Your Family Know You? An Experiment
One of the most eye-opening things I came to realize during criminal investigations is that family members can make lousy “witnesses”. Whenever someone is murdered the police will interview family, friends, neighbors, and co-workers in an effort to better understand the victim’s habits and character. The more we know about the victim the better able we are to understand the conditions of the crime scene. What is normal, what looks out of place? How would they react to a stranger? Do they have any “blind spots”? A blind spot is a weakness or condition in which they would let their guard down. For example, if they are an animal lover they might be more willing to open the door to a stranger seeking help in finding their lost dog?
Over the years I have found that almost all family and friends believe they know the victim quite well but few actually do. The fact of the matter is that everyone has secrets. Some are old and some are new but they are there. When I wrote The Scent of Fear some of my family members were shocked to learn that the story was inspired by real cases in my career. Some had no idea I’d been involved in such cases and most will never know the full extent of my involvement and case work. It’s just not something I talk about.
In some ways, perception of a victim is like an eyewitness account. There are parts that may be true and other parts that aren’t. Some family members project experiences from years past and presume that the same conditions are true today. For example, the victim may have loved cats when she was 13 but now can’t stand them. But the parent or sibling only remembers the victim loving cats. It’s normal for friends and family to grieve a death. At times they feel remorse or guilt for not being closer and then they feel a responsibility to help “solve” the mystery for the police. This can be beneficial but more often than not it introduces a lot of misinformation that we have to deal with.
Because this misinformation affects real police investigations I thought it would be insightful to conduct your own experiment as an author. It can be kind of fun too. So here is what you do. Make a list of ten or twelve general questions about yourself. I will make a general list below that you can use to get the ball rolling. Once you have completed it send the questionnaire to at least a dozen family, friends, even neighbors or co-workers if you can. Ask them to take it seriously as if they were talking to the police. Then take a look at the answers and see what, if any, differences you might find.
This is basically the same thing the police will do (in person). We will interview all these people and sometimes we get answers back that are completely contradictory. It can be a real challenge to try and figure out which “witness” should be trusted more. Anyway, try it out and have a little fun with it. If you want, please comment once you get things back and tell us how they all did. If you have the time try answering the same questions about your family members and then see how many questions you get right.
Sample Questions:
- Do I normally lock my windows at night?
- Do I own a gun or know how to shoot one?
- What kind of beer/wine do I normally drink?
- Describe my daily routine. Do I have a predictable schedule?
- If unmarried, am I dating anyone serious right now?
- Do I have any phobias?
- What are my favorite hobbies?
- Wold I open the door to a strange woman?
- What did I do last weekend?
- Have I ever had any major surgery?
- Have I ever been arrested?
- What time do I typically go to bed? Get up?
Posted on July 14, 2012, in Characters and tagged crime, Crime Scene, csi, detective, eye-witness testimony, fiction, forensics, murder, mystery, police, thriller, tom adair. Bookmark the permalink. 3 Comments.
This is so true. I was surprised by my family when I asked them to share qualities about my daughter for a bio we needed for the news paper. A family member shared that she’s a gymnast which the 13 year old hasn’t done for six years.
Only one person knows me well enough to answer those questions about me. And vice versa. Here’s hoping the police never have cause to be asking questions.
From an outsider’s perspective, how far and how well the police investigate a murder (or disappearance) depends on the competence, funding and level of “give a shit” of the police department in question, not to mention the competence and motivation of the individual police officers tasked with doing the work. Going to the trouble of interviewing relatives, friends, and neighbors thoroughly (or not) depends on all of those things.
It wouldn’t surprise me that some members of some families know very little about other family members despite claiming otherwise. I can see it in my own family. Another thing is, and your questionnaire highlights this – there are some things we will not know about our relatives, but other things that we can know and be sure about. If there are things we know for certain and those facts are sufficient to lead us to certain inescapable conclusions, then what we don’t know doesn’t really matter.
Perhaps a lot of testimony is in fact unreliable, and that general fact leads police to discount a lot of it especially if it sounds strange or out of the ordinary, even if it is true. History is littered with examples of cases where murderers have gone on to murder many more people because people with valid information and correct reasoning were ignored by police. With serial killers this seems to be more the rule rather than the exception. For some reason, it seems difficult for a lot of police (and people in general) to believe that people without a badge can actually be capable of drawing correct conclusions in relation to a murder case, or that the emotion (e.g. fear, urgency, worry) that results from drawing the correct conclusion about a murderer somehow discredits their testimony.
Some examples:
Ann Rule, The Stranger Beside Me (Ted Bundy):
“He had been in Washington, and now he was in Utah. His name was Ted,
and he drove a Volkswagen. His girlfriend, Meg, had been suspicious
enough to turn him in, but Meg was a very jealous woman, a woman who
had been lied to; there were a score or more jealous women who had turned
their boyfriends’ names in as possible “Teds.”
It was after that 1974 Intermountain Conference, after more urging from
Lynn Banks, that Meg Anders had gone a step further. She placed a call
to the Salt Lake County Sheriff’s Office, and repeated her suspicions
about Ted Bundy. Her voice had had a near-hysterical edge to it, and
Capt. Hayward too suspected that this woman on the long distance line
from Seattle was exaggerating, was allowing herself to see connections
that were, at best, tenuous. He wrote down the name “Ted Bundy” and
gave it to Jerry Thompson to add to the burgeoning list of Utah suspects.”
Or Gary Ridgway:
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/greenriver/routine_2.html
The killings started in 1982. Murdered Marie Malvar’s boyfriend, father and brother found Gary Ridgway’s truck and led police to it back in 1983. The police believed Ridgway over the loved ones of the victim. Ridgway was caught in 2001, after murdering many, many other young women.
Or how about Dennis Rader?
http://www.kake.com/home/headlines/1524417.html
Rader stalked Misty King, who repeatedly went to the police, and eventually he even had her dog put down. She then moved away. Through the whole ordeal, police didn’t want to know about it.
Another example: Herb Baumeister.
http://www.trutv.com/library/crime/serial_killers/predators/baumeister/vanda_3.html
“A fellow named Tony Harris (real name withheld per his request) had known Roger Goodlet from the gay bar scene. He had seen Vandagriffs posters and believed he had stumbled onto some information that might solve the puzzle over Rogers whereabouts. His story was incredible, but he swore it was true: He had been with a man whom he was sure was a serial killer. When he tried to tell the local police, they treated him like he was crazy; the FBI suggested he had been on a drug trip.”
I could go on. Finding these examples is almost as easy as picking a given case history and reading it. The fortunate thing is that in lots of these cases, once the correct suspect is identified and the police investigate a little, it will become obvious that they have the correct suspect because everything fits. Once a critical mass of interest in the right suspect within the police force is gained, conviction or something like it is nearly inevitable.