This is an interesting article from the FBI LE Bulletin about a study that was done on homicide 911 calls, regarding differences between guilty callers and innocent callers.
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_6_77/ai_n27504386/
It's based on this research:
Homicide Studies 2009; 13; 69-93
Tracy Harpster, Susan H. Adams and John P. Jarvis
Analyzing 911 Homicide Calls for Indicators of Guilt or Innocence: An Exploratory Analysis
Some examples here:
http://kledispatches.ky.gov/Documents/1011_Revealing_Murder.pdf
The following are listed as indicators of potential innocence in their study of callers reporting homicide:
-Immediacy, including early pleas for help, pleas for help for the victim only, urgency of plea, demanding plea, voice modulation, verbal reaction of caller before the 911 dispatchers first cue
-accuracy, including self-correction
-validity, meaning plea for help
Indicators of potential guilt include:
-Evasion, including resistance in answering, huh factor, repetition, conflicting facts
-extraneous information
-Distancing measures, including acceptance of death (not applicable here because this call does not report a homicide victim), possession of a problem, inappropriate politeness, insulting or blaming victim, plea for caller only and minimizing their own involvement before, after or during the event.
(It's just statistically more likely one way or another, not completely exclusive.)
Now, my random observations looking at father's call
http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/18395759/father-to-911-she-was-abducted-from-my-house
there is no urgency whatsoever, not in the words, not in the tone. There are no pleas for help for Isabel, in fact he never says what kind of help is wanted. He just reports that he needs to report an incident (it's a problem that he possesses , not a plea for help for Isabel) and leaves it completely up to them if they want to investigate or find her or write it down or forgeddaboudit or what, he never says that they need the police here quick or please you need to find her fast she's only six years old.
http://www.tucsonnewsnow.com/story/18395708/celis-911-call-someone-broke-in-and-grabbed-her
Contrast that with the son:
He says they need help fast and reports the address so they know to come to the right place right away. (I know we talked a lot about giving 14 year olds the responsibility of calling 911 but in this instance he did better than his father imo.)
He repeats his plea for urgent help after he's already been told the officers are on the way.
Also the mom asks for urgent help for her daughter, :
Voice modulation refers to the emotional aspect of the tone and he was not audibly upset based on what I could tell. He chuckles.
Accuracy, well, I dunno about that. He self corrects Isabel's spelling and says her height is different from what RC says her height is. (36-40 inches to 44-48 inches). Does he know? Why does he say, "I'm sorry", in the middle of reciting her birth date? Did he say the wrong month at first? T
Here we've got the huh factor, plus, he's not even thinking about Isabel any more. The dispatcher has to remind him about his missing child that he wanted to report.
Is there conflicting information? Was there someone else with him when he went to wake Isabel up? He changes the pronoun from we to I in the middle. It's not the sons apparently if he only woke them up after noticing Isabel was gone.
Maybe it's just me but I find it a little odd that he takes the time to spell out the middle initial, and in code words too. I think I would either forget about the middle name or just state the whole name. Shorter and simpler imo. "Isabel Mercedes".
That bit falls under extraneous information imo. This would be his cue to think if they know or have seen someone who seems suspicious now but instead he recites his alibi. Would this be classified as minimizing his own involvement? He was sleeping and didn't hear a thing, and he didn't even notice the window being open, his son did.
He is polite imo. He says hello and I'm sorry, several times, and politely explains why he seems distracted at the end of the call. (it's Becky's fault).
There is no victim blaming but he appears to have an attitude toward mom.
