Cold-Case Christianity

by J. Warner Wallace

  Contents

  Cover

  Preface

  LEARN TO BE A DETECTIVE

  Ten important principles every aspiring detective needs to master

  Section 1

  Chapter 1

  Principle #1:

  DON’T BE A “KNOW-IT-ALL”

  Chapter 2

  Principle #2:

  LEARN HOW TO “INFER”

  Chapter 3

  Principle #3:

  THINK “CIRCUMSTANTIALLY”

  Chapter 4

  Principle #4:

  TEST YOUR WITNESSES

  Chapter 5

  Principle #5:

  HANG ON EVERY WORD

  Chapter 6

  Principle #6:

  SEPARATE ARTIFACTS FROM EVIDENCE

  Chapter 7

  Principle #7:

  RESIST CONSPIRACY THEORIES

  Chapter 8

  Principle #8:

  RESPECT THE “CHAIN OF CUSTODY”

  Chapter 9

  Principle #9:

  KNOW WHEN “ENOUGH IS ENOUGH”

  Chapter 10

  Principle #10:

  PREPARE FOR AN ATTACK

  Section 2

  EXAMINE THE EVIDENCE

  Applying the principles of investigation to the claims of the New Testament

  Chapter 11

  WERE THEY PRESENT?

  Chapter 12

  WERE THEY CORROBORATED?

  Chapter 13

  WERE THEY ACCURATE?

  Chapter 14

  WERE THEY BIASED?

  Postscript

  BECOMING A “TWO DECISION” CHRISTIAN

  Appendix

  WITNESSES AND RESOURCES

  Compiling the resources necessary to make the case

  Case Files

  EXPERT WITNESSES

  Case Files

  ASSISTING OFFICERS

  Extras

  Special Thanks:

  My deepest thanks to Sean McDowell for motivating me to write this book and for being a true brother in the faith, to Craig Hazen for being the most enthusiastic encourager and connecting me to the people who made the book a reality, to Lee Strobel for having the heart and desire to support this work, and to my literary agent, Mark Sweeney, for answering every phone call and taking a chance with a cold-case detective.

  This book is dedicated to my best friend, most trusted partner, and smartest critic—my wife and inspiration, Susie. Thanks for being the first person to read every word and for helping me to be the kind of man who would even dream about writing a book.

  Foreword

  I loved hanging out with homicide detectives.

  I started my journalism career as a general assignment reporter on the overnight shift at the Chicago Tribune, and that meant covering the frequent murders committed around the city—crime-syndicate hits, gang-related violence, domestic disputes gone awry, robberies that got out of hand. Later I was assigned to the criminal courts, where I reported on the major homicide trials from around Cook County.

  All of which meant that I spent a lot of time interviewing and socializing with homicide detectives. I liked them because they were no-nonsense, get-to-the-point people, with an uncanny ability to cut through the fog of deception that defendants used to cover their tracks. These street-toughened investigators were seldom fooled by a phony alibi or a flimsy excuse as they systematically unraveled the mysteries that confounded everyone else. They were evidence driven—“just the facts, ma’am,” as the old Jack Webb character in Dragnet used to say—and so was I, constantly checking and rechecking my information before publishing my reports for the city to see.

  Back then, I was an atheist. I thought that faith in God was based on conjecture, wishful thinking, and emotions; in fact, the idea that there might be evidence supporting the existence of God was totally alien to me. And I wasn’t alone.

  J. Warner Wallace is a cold-case homicide investigator who also started out as an outspoken spiritual skeptic. He began with the assumption that the supernatural was impossible. Yet when he diligently applied his skills as a detective—allowing the evidence to take him wherever it would lead—he came to a far different conclusion. Assessing the evidence with razor-like precision, he solved the most important mystery of all time—whether Jesus of Nazareth is the unique Son of God.

  In his savvy and captivating book, Jim will introduce you to the kinds of tools and techniques that he routinely uses to crack unsolved murders that have long baffled other cops. He will show you how this same analytical thinking can be used to crack the case of a long-ago killing on a cross—and the incredible resurrection that followed. It’s a fascinating process, with Jim drawing on his quarter century of police experience to explain how and why the evidence of history decisively tips the scales in favor of Christianity.

  If you’re a spiritual skeptic like Jim and I were for many years, then you’ll find this investigative adventure to be an irresistible, eye-opening, and potentially life-changing journey, full of helpful insights and wisdom. Like a good cop, I hope you’ll pursue the evidence to the conclusion it ultimately supports. That verdict, in the end, will be yours to reach.

  If you’re a follower of Jesus, then Jim’s account will not only bolster your own faith, but also sharpen your skills in explaining to others why so many incisive thinkers throughout history have concluded that Christianity is uniquely credible and trustworthy.

  Undoubtedly, you’ve seen media stories that have traced how cold-case detectives have pieced together an evidential puzzle in order to solve the most perplexing of homicides. Perhaps one of those accounts was based on a case that Jim actually helped crack. But as important as these investigations are, none of them approach the significance of the case that this book tackles.

  So get ready to shadow Jim as he probes the evidence for faith. You’ll find his approach to be compelling, his logic to be sound, and his conclusions to be amply supported. Unravel with him the historical case for Jesus—and discover its eternal implications for you and all the people you know.

  Lee Strobel

  www.LeeStrobel.com

  author of The Case for Christ and The Case for Faith

  Preface

  THE DETECTIVE WAY

  I got the call at about 1:00 a.m. Detectives who are assigned to the homicide unit also investigate officer-involved shootings (OISs), and all of us on the OIS team were called out for this one. When I arrived at the scene, Officer Mark Walker was standing by his patrol car, talking with a sergeant, and waiting for our arrival. I shook his hand, made sure he was ready to talk about the shooting, and began to walk through the events that precipitated our “callout.”

  Mark told me that he was working patrol when he saw a man driving down the street, swerving from lane to lane as though he was drunk. He pulled the driver over and approached his car. When he leaned in to talk to the man, he could smell the alcohol on his breath. Mark asked the man to step out from the car, and the driver reluctantly complied. As the man stood outside his car, Mark could see that he was angry and defiant. Mark decided to conduct a quick “pat-down” search to make sure the irritated driver wasn’t carrying any weapons. Mark had no idea that the driver was Jacob Stevens, a parolee with a long arrest record in an adjacent city. Jacob had just been released from state prison. He was on parole for an assault charge, and tonight he was carrying a loaded Colt .45-caliber pistol hidden in his waistband. Jacob knew that he would go back to jail if the gun was discovered, and he was determined to stay out of
jail.

  When Mark asked Jacob Stevens to turn around so he could conduct the pat-down search, Jacob turned away for a moment, pulled his gun, and then turned back toward Mark, pointing the gun at Mark’s chest.

  “I knew that he had the drop on me,” Mark told me as he recalled the events. “His gun was already drawn and pointed at me before I could even get my hand on mine.”

  Jacob had no intention of discussing the situation with Mark. He’d already decided that he wasn’t going back to jail, even if it meant killing this police officer. Jacob pointed his gun at Mark and started to squeeze the trigger. Mark was about to enter the fight of his life, and he was starting off with a distinct disadvantage; he was already seconds behind his opponent.

  All of us who work in law enforcement understand the importance of wearing our bulletproof vests. When we first became officers, we were trained with these vests, and at some point most of us were shown how the vests performed in live-fire tests. We knew that they could stop a bullet, including a .45 round. On this night, Mark was going to put his vest to the test.

  “I just tensed my stomach muscles and prepared to take the shot as I pulled my gun out of the holster. I knew he was going to get the first round off.”

  While Mark knew that his vest could sustain the impact of a .45-caliber round, tonight he trusted in the vest for the very first time. In that singular moment, Mark went from “belief that” to “belief in.” It’s one thing to believe that the vest can save a life; it’s another thing to trust it to save your own life. Mark obviously survived the shooting and lived to describe it for us. The lesson I learned from Mark, however, had far more impact on my life than he would ever know.

  FROM “BELIEF THAT” TO “BELIEF IN”

  I was thirty-five years old before I first paid attention to a pastor’s sermon. A fellow officer had been inviting me to church for many months, and while I was able to put him off for some time, I eventually acquiesced and attended a Sunday-morning service with my family. I managed to ignore most of what the pastor talked about until he began to paint a picture of Jesus that caught my attention. He characterized Jesus as a really smart guy who had some remarkably wise things to say about life, family, relationships, and work. I began to believe that this might be true. While I was uninterested in bowing my knee to Jesus as God, I was at least willing to listen to Jesus as a teacher. A week later I purchased my first Bible.

  My friends knew me as an angry atheist, a skeptic who thoughtfully dissected Christians and the Christian worldview, yet I suddenly found myself reading the Gospels to hear what Jesus had to say. Something about the Gospels caught my attention, more as an investigator than as someone interested in the ancient philosophy of an imaginary sage. By this time in my life, I had already served as a patrol officer and a member of the Gang Detail, the Metro Team (investigating street narcotics), the SWAT Team, and the Crime Impact Team (investigating career criminals). I had interviewed hundreds (if not thousands) of eyewitnesses and suspects. I had become familiar with the nature of eyewitness statements, and I understood how testimony was evaluated in a court of law. Something about the Gospels struck me as more than mythological storytelling. The Gospels actually appeared to be ancient eyewitness accounts.

  I conducted so many interviews and had such success getting suspects to “cop-out” that my department sent me to a number of investigative schools to refine my skills; I was eventually trained in Forensic Statement Analysis (FSA). By carefully employing this methodology and scrutinizing a suspect’s choice of pronouns, use of tensed language, compression or expansion of time (along with many other linguistic tendencies), I was typically able to determine if he or she committed the crime, and I could often establish the time of day when the crime actually occurred! If this technique could provide me with such incredible insight into the statements of suspects and witnesses, why couldn’t it be used to investigate the claims of the Gospels? I began to use FSA as I studied the gospel of Mark. Within a month, and in spite of my deep skepticism and hesitation, I concluded that Mark’s gospel was the eyewitness account of the apostle Peter. I was beginning to move from a belief that Jesus was a wise teacher to a belief in what He said about Himself. I began a journey from casual assent to committed trust, from belief that to belief in.

  In my current assignment, I investigate cold-case murders. Unlike other lesser crimes, an unsolved homicide is never closed; time doesn’t run out on a murder investigation. My particular agency has dozens of unsolved murders that remain open, waiting for someone to take the time to reexamine them. There are many similarities between investigating cold cases and investigating the claims of Christianity. Cold-case homicides are events from the distant past for which there is often little or no forensic evidence. These kinds of cases are sometimes solved on the basis of eyewitness testimony, even though many years have passed between the point of the crime and the point of the investigation. While there may not be any surviving eyewitnesses to the actual murder, there are often witnesses available who can help puzzle together the events leading up to the crime or the behavior of a suspect following the crime. These witnesses can be evaluated in a number of ways to confirm their reliability. In the end, a strong “circumstantial” case can usually be made by collecting witness statements and verifying these observations with what little forensic evidence is available. By taking this approach, I have arrested and successfully prosecuted a number of cold-case suspects who thought they had gotten away with murder.

  Christianity makes a claim about an event from the distant past for which there is little or no forensic evidence. Like cold cases, the truth about what happened can be discovered by examining the statements of eyewitnesses and comparing them with what little additional evidence is accessible to us. If the eyewitnesses can be evaluated (and their statements can be verified by what we have available), an equally strong circumstantial case can be made for the claims of the New Testament. But are there any reliable eyewitness statements in existence to corroborate in the first place? This became the most important question I had to answer in my personal investigation of Christianity. Were the gospel narratives eyewitness accounts, or were they only moralistic mythologies? Were the Gospels reliable, or were they filled with untrustworthy, supernatural absurdities? The most important questions I could ask about Christianity just so happened to fall within my area of expertise.

  I hope to share some of that expertise with you in this book. Somewhere on my journey from “belief that” to “belief in,” a friend told me about C. S. Lewis. After reading Mere Christianity, I purchased everything Lewis had written. One quote from God in the Dock stuck with me through the years. Lewis correctly noted, “Christianity is a statement which, if false, is of no importance, and, if true, is of infinite importance. The one thing it cannot be is moderately important.”1 Christianity, if it is true, is worthy of our investigation. Over the years I’ve retained my skepticism and my desperate need to examine the facts, even as I’ve journeyed from “belief that” to “belief in.” I am still a detective, after all. I think I’ve learned a few things that may help you investigate the truth claims of the Bible.

  I will tell you up front that I am going to provide you with a number of examples from my career as a homicide and cold-case detective as I share what I’ve learned over the years; I will be telling some cop stories. I’ve carefully edited these examples, however, changing the names of those who were involved and modifying the details of each case slightly to protect the officers and victims. I’ve had the privilege of working some of the most important and well-publicized cases our city has encountered in the past twenty years. While I want you to learn from what we did right and what we did wrong, I want to respect the privacy of the detectives (and victims’ families) along the way.

  If you’re a skeptic who rejects the Bible like I did, my experiences and insights might help you assess the gospel writers in a new light. If you’re someone who h
as encountered Christians who were unprepared to defend what they believe, I’d like to encourage you to be patient with us because the Christian tradition is actually intellectually robust and satisfying, even if we believers are occasionally unable to respond to your challenges. The answers are available; you don’t have to turn off your brain to be a believer. Yes, it is possible to become a Christian because of the evidence rather than in spite of the evidence. Many of us have done just that.

  If you’re already a believer, my experiences might provide you with a few tools that can help you defend your faith in a more vigorous and informed way. You may learn something new about the history of Christianity or the nature and power of evidence. I want to encourage you to become an informed Christian, to worship God with your mind, and to prepare yourself as a Christian case maker. Let’s start by examining ten simple principles of evidence that may change the way you look at Christianity forever.

  CASE NOTES

  Detectives become copious note takers, collecting information and documenting their progress along the way. The notes at the end of each chapter refer to materials cited in our discussions of the evidence.

  1. C. S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology and Ethics (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1970), 101.

  Section 1

  Learn to Be a Detective

  Ten important principles every aspiring detective needs to master

  Chapter 1

  Principle #1:

  DON’T BE A “KNOW-IT-ALL”

  “Jeffries and Wallace,” Alan barked impatiently as the young officer scrambled to write our names on the crime-scene entry log. Alan lifted the yellow tape and passed beneath it, crouching painfully from the stress he had to place on his bad knee. “I’m getting too old for this,” he said as he unbuttoned the coat of his suit. “The middle of the night gets later every time they call us out.”