by Jim Wygant
Table of Contents
1. Please Don’t Tell Me The Truth
2. Hatching An Examiner
3. The Great Soda Pop Hoax
4. Mucking Around In Truth
5. The Machine
6. Thieves Among Us
7. Rape Suspects
8. Murder Suspects
9. Wrongly Accused
10. Why We Lie
11. Reputations At Risk
12. Dangerous Men
13. The Francke Case
14. Prisoner Schemes
15. Mistakes
16. Betrayers Of Trust
17. Some Of The Worst
18. Epilogue
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Confessions
of a
Lie Detector
years of theft, sex,
and murder
by Jim Wygant
Copyright © 2011 by Jim Wygant
www.jimwygant.com
Published 2011 by Lycetta Press, Portland, Oregon, USA
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the author, except for brief passages quoted in a review of this work.
The material presented in this book describes real events. Except in Chapter 13, The Francke Case, names have been changed and circumstances altered slightly to preserve confidentiality.
other books by
Jim Wygant
novels
The Spy’s Demise
Jessica’s Tune
visit the author’s web site:
www.jimwygant.com
1. Please Don’t Tell Me The Truth
The test was over. The man sat silently a few feet away from me, his hands folded in his lap, while I scored the polygraph charts, analyzing the irregular lines and looking for critical changes. When I finished I told him that the test indicated he was lying. We talked about what lay ahead for him. He had been arrested weeks earlier and his case was already set for trial. After brief conversation he agreed to talk to his attorney about a plea bargain. He seemed almost grateful that the difficult process of denial was nearly over.
His wife had accompanied him and had waited outside my office for the hour and a half I spent with her husband. I walked him to the connecting door. As I opened it, her first words to him were, “Well, you didn’t do it, did you?”
He immediately reverted to his former denials.
That woman’s question represented something we all share. We do not like to believe that we have been lied to. We fear that if we identify a lie in any part of what someone told us, then all the rest is also doubtful. The whole fabric of our relationship with the liar is placed at risk.
Lies represent betrayal, the willingness to take advantage of a common vulnerability – trust. At worst a lie springs from cynical disregard, at best from primitive self-preservation. It is obvious that a discovered lie damages the liar. He becomes a stranger, disenfranchised from those whose trust he violated. Less apparent is the impact on the person to whom the lie was told. Once that person begins to doubt, he slips into a painful dilemma. He wants to know the truth, but he does not want to admit that he was duped by the liar.
We often make an investment in what others tell us. We form beliefs, decisions, and loyalties that we might not otherwise have undertaken. We build a structure on a foundation that we assume is sound.
In relations with others, we nearly always start in a state of belief, not disbelief. We are inclined to accept just about anything we are told if the teller is serious enough and has not previously compromised his credibility. Such innocent acceptance often makes it difficult for us to admit later that our initial trust was mistaken. It is an affront to self-esteem. We thought we knew someone, but we must conclude that he fooled us. We tend to see that failure as partly our own fault, a personal weakness. It’s a charming, humble notion, that a lie can diminish the person who hears it. At some time we have all fallen victim to it and have cooperated with the liar in order to avoid what we regarded as the more unpleasant truth.
When a man has an appointment for a polygraph examination, it is not unusual for his wife or girlfriend or parents to tell him, “you’re going to do fine.” Reassurances like “I know you didn’t do it” and “I believe you, regardless of what anyone else says” are intended to be helpful. They often have the opposite effect. The liar interprets those messages as “don’t tell me you did it,” which is a strong deterrent to acknowledging the truth.
When someone is accused, it’s too bad that we don’t say something like, “I’m prepared to deal with the truth, whatever it is. If there’s anything you want to tell me, I’ll listen.” Of course, that requires a degree of commitment and self-assurance that we often fail to achieve.
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One of the first polygraph examinations I conducted as a new examiner was on a man I’ll call William Freeman. He worked in a sporting goods store. He was not just an employee, but a close personal friend and fishing companion of the store’s owner, Chet Wanamaker. When Wanamaker phoned me, he said that money was missing from a cash register and that Bill was one of those who’d had access. Wanamaker said that he wanted to test his friend Bill first and then move on to other employees (this was long before state and federal laws made tests of employees virtually impossible). He said that he had no particular reason to suspect Bill. That was the first lie in this case, and it blew right by me.
I remember being nervous when I met Bill Freeman. I was not yet confident about procedures that were very new to me. I introduced myself and began an explanation of what we would be doing. Freeman listened respectfully. I wanted to get everything right, and I suppose I was more focused on my own possibility of failure than on any silent signals emanating from the man I was about to test.
We discussed all of the questions that I had prepared in accordance with what I had been taught only a short time earlier. I escorted Freeman to the examination chair, a formidable looking thing with arms that extended far enough to support his hands. I reached around Freeman’s chest and fastened a flexible rubber tube that would monitor his respiration. I placed another tube a few inches below that. I wrapped the blood pressure cuff around his biceps and fastened two small electrodes to his fingertips. They would record tiny changes in electrical resistance in his skin. With everything in place, I inflated the blood pressure cuff and started the chart paper rolling. I began reading and marking off the questions at measured intervals. The pens on the instrument rose and fell according to the subtle changes transmitted from Freeman’s body. We finished the first chart, paused briefly, then repeated the process, except that I changed the order of the questions slightly. Another pause. A third time through the questions. Then I shut off the polygraph and removed the attachments.
Freeman waited quietly while I analyzed the charts. I had done everything by the book and was alarmed to discover that all of the little numbers I had written down added up to lying. I must have screwed up. I went back to the beginning of the first chart and scored everything again. Same result. The owner of the business had told me that this man was his friend and that there was no particular reason to suspect him. Surely the test was wrong.
I told Freeman that his charts were not clear and that it was advisable to revise the questions and run a few more charts. He seemed complacent. I made a few changes, a little fine tuning, hooked him up and ran three more charts. Same results. There was no escaping it. In gentle, apolog
etic terms I told Freeman that he had flunked the test, that his body had reacted in a manner that corresponded to lying. My tone probably suggested that something had gone wrong in the test, rather than the possibility that his body had accurately revealed his lying.
Freeman admitted he had stolen the money.
While I tried to think of some comment that would mask my surprise, he asked that he be allowed to inform his boss. I granted him a reasonable period of time to do that and he left my office.
I thought about this case for a long time, amazed at how I had been misled by the assertion of the store owner that he had no particular reason to suspect Freeman. I concluded that the owner had been lying, at least to me and perhaps to himself as well. It should have been obvious to me that the owner, Wanamaker, would not spend money for a polygraph examination of someone he did not suspect. His decision to test Freeman should have spoken more loudly to me than his denial of suspicion.
I also concluded that what I had regarded as complacency in Freeman during the test was actually resignation. He knew that he’d been caught. In that sense, he may have had more faith in the test than I myself had at that early moment in my career.
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After thousands of tests, I remain fascinated by examinees’ responses when I inform them that they did badly on the test. Most are not offended at being told that their body reacted in the test in a way characteristic of someone lying or hiding information. Not only do they not get angry, they usually thank me when they leave. Aside from sociopaths, who enjoy manipulating people and don’t care about the effects of their lies on others, most of us probably do not like to lie. We do it when we think we are forced to – forced by the need to avoid humiliation, punishment, or loss of something precious. That last item is often simply the love and trust of a spouse or companion. So when we are caught at a lie in a manner in which it is pointless to make further denials, there is often a sense of relief. It is not easy to lie. If there were no consequences it would always be much easier to tell the truth.
When I became a polygraph examiner I embraced the high ideal that if I were able to help one person per year who had been falsely accused, all the rest was worthwhile. That became my purpose, just as I suppose we all like to think we have some gratifyingly idealistic purpose in whatever we choose to do. Over the years that has changed. I believe now that I also help those I call liars.
I have worked almost exclusively with persons accused of crimes. They are sent to me by their attorneys. They all deny at least some part of what they have been accused of. I have found that in many cases they have never been given an opportunity to admit anything.
It is not unusual to encounter a criminal suspect whose wife or companion has demanded a denial. “You didn’t do it, did you?”
An attorney’s office does not generally provide any more favorable opportunities for admissions. Attorneys, like doctors, receive very little training in interviewing their clients, in listening. Clients often tell me that their attorneys never really speak to them about their case, beyond simply asking “did you do it?” What the client means is that his attorney did not permit him the time to relate circumstances that might be irrelevant to a legal defense but that cushion a difficult admission.
I will listen to most explanations. I do not feel compelled to act as though I either believe or disbelieve them. What a person chooses to report, the kind of language he uses, the chronology he constructs, and what he chooses to omit often reveal much more than the words he speaks.
The saddest example of that must occur in sex abuse cases. When an adult male tells me that an 8-year-old girl is a “lying bitch” and that “she has sex with every boy she meets” and that she acted sexually provocative toward him, I expect he will not do well on his polygraph test. It is not necessary for me to believe or disbelieve his counter-accusations. I recognize that his hostile characterization of a child who claims to be a victim is inconsistent with people who are telling the truth. Those who are falsely accused are more likely to say they feel sorry for the victim or that she’s confused. They are unlikely to describe her in malicious terms usually spoken only against another adult. That has been my experience, but as a polygraph examiner I still run a standard test, still treat the suspect with the same degree of neutral respect, and still rely upon the charts themselves for the final decision. They contain the raw data that can be reviewed by another examiner. My personal judgments can not.
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When I met Randy Latham I thought I was encountering only another routine sex abuse case – routine in the sense that the circumstances of the alleged offenses never vary much. What I discovered in talking with him was that he had only recently been released from a penitentiary in another state after serving a long term for murder. The victim had been his wife, and he had killed her in the presence of their infant daughter. It was that same girl, grown into adolescence, who now accused him of having sexual intercourse with her.
Latham freely admitted the murder and did not attempt to excuse it by blaming the victim. It happened during an argument and he appeared to regret it deeply. His daughter had been raised by relatives while he passed the years in prison. When he was freed, he and his daughter were reunited, to the great joy of both. But as the months slipped by, Latham formed a new relationship with an adult woman. He ultimately disclosed to his daughter that he planned to marry again. Shortly after that she complained to authorities that he had engaged in sexual intercourse with her.
Latham was shaken by the terrible possibility of being sent back to a prison he had only recently left. Regardless of that, he spoke compassionately of his daughter. He said that he did not know why she would make a false claim, but he thought that memories of the murder she had witnessed might be a factor. His obvious attitude toward his daughter was disappointment and confusion, but not hostility.
When I had completed the polygraph examination I told Latham that the test indicated he was being truthful. I sent a report to his attorney in the state where the new charge was being considered. That attorney forwarded a copy of the report to the appropriate police agency. They asked that Latham undergo another test with their own police examiner. I assured him and his attorney that he had nothing to fear. Again the results indicated truthfulness. When the police revealed the test results to the girl, she broke down and tearfully admitted that she had made up the story because she did not want her father to get married. She had not considered all of the possible consequences of her complaint, but had only counted upon it sabotaging the marriage.
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Latham was the exception. Most men suspected of sexual contact with a juvenile are guilty as charged. And in the mid-1980s the number of men accused of that crime began to increase dramatically, until sex abuse cases comprised nearly half of all my tests. Over time a profile of the “typical” sex offender has emerged. It is not what people once imagined.
When I was a child in the 1940s, we were cautioned about any man who offered candy or invited a ride in his car. The enemy we feared was a stranger. If he was described it was in distinctly negative terms: unshaven, a shabby overcoat, hat pulled down over the eyes, a lurking, furtive posture, even the smell of evil, something I imagined would be like a blend of alcohol, cigarettes, and sweat. The crime itself was often designated in police reports and newspaper stories as “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” or some similar euphemism. Those words say something about the culture that adopted them. There’s an odd suggestion in that phrase that the suspect was only an incidental consideration in some legacy of misdeeds that the child had accumulated elsewhere on his or her own.
Until the late fifties, families remained relatively intact in the United States. Divorce was still regarded as an occasion of shame. Church attendance was common. There may have been fewer actual incidents of sex abuse in those years; there is no doubt that the number of complaints to public agencies was substantially less than today. That may have been because of a relu
ctance to make a public issue out of anything sexual. I suppose the rationale among the public at the time may have gone something like this: we don’t want to have to talk about sex at all, and the damage to the accused adult if we are wrong is irreparable, so we’ll fix things ourselves without telling anybody else. Sex abuse was considered a family matter rather than a police matter, and any attempt to resolve the problem often occurred only within the family.
Some people regarded sexual contact between an adult and a juvenile as nothing more than an indiscretion, something like alcoholism. It demanded a remedy but was not served well by the police or the courts. When I worked in a District Attorney’s office in the late 1960s, that attitude still prevailed. I recall a jury that quickly acquitted a minister of charges of sexual contact with two boys who lived with him in foster care. We in the District Attorney’s office were not surprised at the acquittal, but we remained convinced that the man had done what the boys claimed. In the community, the prosecutor’s office and the boys were regarded as the “villains” for having brought this man to court. He became the “victim” of efforts to prosecute him.
What I know today from having tested thousands of sex offenders is that they mostly do not match the stranger I was warned against as a child. The typical sex offender lives in the same home with the victim. He may be a natural father but more often he is a step-father or boyfriend of the victim’s mother.
The mother often chooses to side with the suspect against her own child. Although that is shameful, it is not as callous as it first sounds.
A woman who has granted sexual intimacy to a man has her own self-esteem invested in the relationship. For her to admit that she did not really know him may cause her to feel cheap. But to go to the extent of acknowledging that she unwittingly shared his sexual touches with her own child is for many women unthinkable. It must be one of the most compelling reasons that anyone might have under any circumstances to shun the truth. In its consequences it is also one of the most distressing – a mother calling her victimized daughter a liar.