I found an interesting scientific article:
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
It's about homicide 911 calls and how to determine the likelihood of the caller being guilty. The abstract is readable here.
http://hsx.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/13/1/69 The full text requires a subscription, I got it through my library.
Here is an earlier article from some of the same authors with much the same information in a more practically oriented, less scientific style:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_6_77/ai_n27504386/?tag=content;col1
Based on their research, Harpster, Adams and Jarvis list the following 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 measure, including acceptance of death (dependent on whether there is a relationship between the caller and a 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. (I just seen him in his car-type of responses).
None of the above mentioned factors are definitive indications of guilt or innocence. All of them can be found in both kinds of calls. Its just a matter of statistical probability.
The possession of problem is a bit hard to explain so Ill quote:
"Why would individuals call the emergency line and concentrate on themselves, reporting a problem without asking the dispatcher for assistance for the person who needs it? The following dialogue occurred when a father called 911 concerning his son:
Dispatcher: 911. What is your emergency?
Guilty caller: I have an unconscious child who is breathing very shallowly.
In this case, the father took personal possession of a problem ("I have") and referred to his problem (his dying son) as "an unconscious child." When the paramedics arrived at the residence, the child already had died. The father had assaulted his son, causing cerebral hemorrhaging. Twelve percent of the 911 callers in the study took personal possession of the problem. All were guilty of the homicide."
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2194/is_6_77/ai_n27504386/pg_3/?tag=content;col1
The most statistically significant factor in Harpster et als study was extraneous information (in regard to the outcome, guilt or innocent) but most of the others ended up significant as well, with the exception of minimizing. I figure thats because both genuine innocent bystanders who just happened upon a body by chance and killers who want to keep out of jail may say they just happened upon a body by chance. Self-correction wasnt significant in a multivariate analysis, possibly because it came up in such a small number of calls. The authors note that there might be other factors, such as self-interruptions, contractions and usage they didnt study.
The authors also discuss that one limitation of their study is that they didnt study calls made by people under 19 nor anyone who was severely under influence while calling. Does this mean it cant be applied to Haleigh 911 call? Misty was 17, I dont think that two years would make very much of a difference in verbal behaviour but youth and lack of experience might account for some uncertainty and awkwardness with the procedure. Presumably the emotional reaction a loving and responsible teen stepmom has when a child is missing is pretty much as big as an older caretaker, though, and if one is mature enough to take the responsibility for two children 24/7 one has to be able to report them missing if need be. It is not known if Misty had taken anything that night. If she had it might account for some of the huh factor and the trouble she had answering simple questions.
Some of the citations may be worth looking at. For example:
Olsson, J. (2004). Forensic linguistics: An introduction to language, crime and law. London: Continuum International Publishing Group.
I havent read this yet but it is about 911 calls in cases of arson. According to Harpster et al, Olson says that hoax calls differ from genuine ones in that they display less sense of urgency and cooperation by delivering information with
full, frank and timely answering of any questions in addition to the spontaneous offering of any information regarded as essential and also
defined aspects of phonetic output as the emergency callers attempt to communicate nonextraneous information, with intonational emphasis and a rising voice pitch on key words. I find this interesting, although we know by now that this call was not a hoax at least in that Haleigh really existed and was really gone.
I wanted to look at information that was offered by Misty spontaneously versus that requested by the dispatcher.
The information Misty considers essential enough to volunteer without being asked includes the following:
-she just woke up
-backdoor was wide open
-she cant find their daughter (not exactly true, Haleigh was not her daughter.)
-she was cleaning
-the door was bricked
-when she was sleeping it was not like that
The information that she has to be asked for, sometimes repeatedly, includes
-the address (asked repeatedly)
-when did she last see the child (she prefaces her reply with umm, we like just, you know
stalling for time. Who is we? Just what? You know? Clearly the dispatcher doesnt know or she wouldnt be asking the question. Do the pauses and restarts indicate that she was about to say something else but thought better of it?)
-childs age
-childs clothing (we now know her reply to this question was false)
-explanation of why she mentioned a brick (her reply is confusing, inconsistent, first she says it was on the floor, then on the stairs, (almost like), then on a walkway)
-color of the house
-description of missing child, her height, weight, color of her hair (stalling again, requiring the dispatcher to repeat some questions as much as three times, reciting back the dispatchers questions, repeating words in her answer, giving vague answers, does not know what she weighs, why does she insert oh my gosh when affirming that the child has brown hair, why did the dispatcher have to suggest a color for her at all? She should know what color hair her stepdaughter has. Maybe she said brown and the recording didnt catch it but the dispatcher did. Mind you, the Amber alert listed her hair as blonde.)
-name and phone number (again, the dispatcher asks for the name repeatedly, there appears to be some confusion about which name is Haleighs and which Mistys)
-if the door was locked
-are there obvious signs of forced entry
-the missing childs name (somehow neither Ron or Misty mentions her name during this entire phone call of several minutes. The dispatcher has to ask for it near the end of the call. Its a bit odd to me. If I had a child missing Id like the searchers with megaphones yelling her name in every forest nearby ASAP and I would probably be hollering out in the yard myself)
-her date of birth (she cant supply this)
I sense a pattern here. All that Misty offers freely is that she was cleaning and sleeping and when she woke up there was a brick and an open back door, and she cant find her daughter. Basically the things she tells unasked make up an explanation as to why she doesnt know anything, an alibi of sorts for her. Look, I cleaned, (it must mean shes a good housekeeper, why else is she mentioning it? Is her cleaning somehow significant to Haleigh being missing? Its an odd piece of extraneous information), and while I slept someone put a brick at the back door and presumably a female child I am related to somehow disappeared from that back door.
However, the dispatcher has to prompt or to repeatedly beg for any essential information that might help LE to find the house or to broadcast a missing children alert for Haleigh (name, age, time last seen, place last seen, clothing, size, general description). None of that is volunteered without being asked. None. There is also no mention of any medical conditions that she has. So she doesnt do very well on Olssons criterion of
spontaneous delivery of information regarded as essential . How about
"full, frank and timely answering of any questions? Not that so much either. It might be that she was distracted by something that Ron did or she couldnt hear the dispatcher too well and thats why the dispatcher had to repeat some of her questions but there appears to be stalling, a huh factor with some pretty straightforward questions, and some vague, unhelpful answers. Shes trying but the dispatcher has to dig everything out of her with a shovel.
There is also no plea for help on Mistys part. She is politely reporting waking up, an open back door, and a missing child, in that order, not urgently or even calmly requesting or demanding immediate assistance, taking her time to do it (hi, umm
I just woke up...and our backdoor was wide open and I think...and I cant find our daughter).
RCs contribution is more difficult to analyze because he didnt make the call from the beginning and we cant be sure of how much of the previous conversation between Misty and the dispatcher he could follow. He was there making background comments at least some of the time. Im not sure if anyones studied how 911 calls by several callers differ from others.
However, his voluntary offerings to the conversation include the following
-he needs someone to get there now (he says this repeatedly)
-he just got home from work
-his five year old daughter is gone
-he assumes that she was taken by someone and hell kill the perp if he can
-he doesnt care about spending the rest of his life in prison
-he knows that his threats are recorded but he doesnt care
-hell Fing kill somebody
-they need to find her
-he is looking for his phone, theyve got better people to talk to than 911 because LE wasnt there immediately
His prompted replies to the dispatchers queries include the following
-he doesnt know what kind of pajamas she had. This is where he hang up, I think.
-F her date of birth
His alibi is there and he demands for help but otherwise there isnt much that helps in the search for Haleigh. Yeah, he wuz at werk, and didnt know which pajamas Misty dressed her in, but he could have asked Misty, Misty was there. I guess he didnt think of that. Anyway, doesnt matter, because Misty didnt know either and because I presume that while they searched, LE checked out any little girls spotted in suspicious circumstances regardless of what they were wearing. .
One thing he could have helped with if hed cooperated better was to mention that there was a non-custodial parent. During that 911 call, it never even came out that there might be a possibility its a family abduction. Misty introduced herself as Haleighs mother, talking about our daughter, Ronald about my daughter and neither of them corrected the erroneous assumption that they were husband and wife, so the dispatcher probably just assumed that she was talking with Haleighs biological parents. If Crystal took her it might have made a difference if either Ronald or Misty could have supplied them with Crystals name and address, description and the description of her car or at least the information that there was a mother elsewhere and LE might need to check her and her family out. The 911 call was made at 3:27 and according to Crystal she got the first call 3:49 so thats a 22 minutes delay in contacting her plus whatever time was wasted before Misty called 911. You never know, sometimes 2 minutes make all the difference in solving a crime. Possibly it just did not occur to them at the time, or maybe they had some other suspects in mind. Ron refers to the abductor as him.
Ron does demands for help, and Id put him down as urgent although his urgency is downplayed a bit by the fact that he initially had Misty make the call and let her waste time umming and huhhing. Not sure his effing would have been any better though. The dispatcher preferred to talk to Misty anyway.
I counted four to six instances that might be classified as pleas for help, such as they are.
-(background) tell them they've better come on... Just a general hurry up, not a plea for help for anyone in particular
-Ronald Cummings: "Man, I need somebody to get here now!" plea for help for the caller
-Ronald Cummings: "I just got home from work, my five-year-old daughter is gone- I need someone here now." An unrequested alibi, minimizing his own involvement, followed by a plea for help for the caller
-Ronald Cummings: "they better bring f'ing something out here- because if I get my hands on that mother f'er I'm going to kill him...I don't give a f%*)@# about prison...mother F'ing prison doesn't scare me." This was in response to the dispatcher mentioning the dogs. Very urgent but not really a plea for either the caller or the victim, more like a general warning that there will be violence. Youd better come because I wont account for my actions. A plea to put the perp away (for his own safety). Haleigh would probably have preferred a dad out of jail. Although I was tempted to classify this under extraneous information because his feelings about ending up in jail were not solicited for and did not have anything to do with finding Haleigh. Hes only concerned about finding and beating up the perp here, not finding her and helping her to get home well soon.
Ronald Cummings: "F her date of birth- we need to find her- f her date of birth." Not sure if this should be included as a plea for help because no help is actually asked for and its not clear if hes including the police in his we or if hes just talking about himself, Misty and the better people to call. Still, I mention it because its the only instance during the 911 call that either of them mentions that the victim, the missing child needs to be found. Haleigh, remember her?
Ronald Cummings: "where is my f'ing phone...we've got better people to talk to then some mother f'ers who ain't coming." Again, not exactly a plea for help because he writes LE off but I guess complaining that they take too long arriving implies that one would have liked them to arrive fast.
Mind you, Im not sure that the plea for help for the caller/the victim distinction is as meaningful in a missing person case as in a homicide because the homicide callers have the option to demand an ambulance for the victim lying bleeding on their floor but LE investigating a missing person doesnt have a location for the ambulance to be sent and have to start the investigation by talking to the caller. Still, there seems to be a slight difference between please help my daughter, you have to find my daughter, shes five years old and afraid of the dark and she cant survive long in this cold without her shoes, oh God, what if someones abducted her, youve got to come and FIND HER NOW and I need police assistance, I cannot find my daughter, please help me before Im gonna kill someone, Ill end up in prison before too long
.
So what have we got from the list of indicators Harpster et al studied? The comments in brackets are my interpretation, not theirs, obviously.
Indicators of potential innocence include:
-Immediacy, including early pleas for help (not for Misty, yes for Ronald if you start counting from where he appears on the transcript instead of the start of the call), pleas for help for the victim only (not really for either of them), urgency of plea (yes for Ron, no for Misty), demanding plea (yes for Ron, not for Misty), voice modulation (I just went by the transcript and didnt look at this. Thats a whole another exercise), verbal reaction of caller before the 911 dispatchers first cue (apparently no, although Im not sure if the recording starts before the dispatcher speaks)
-Accuracy, including self-correction (well, theres the brick on the floor, stairs, walkway. Does it count as self-correction or conflicting facts? She knew where the brick was from the beginning but self-correction in this study has more to do with correcting oneself after one learns new information. No correction about the familial relationships)
-Validity, meaning plea for help (yes for Ron, not for Misty)
Indicators of potential guilt according to the same authors include:
-Evasion, including resistance in answering, huh factor, repetition, conflicting facts (Ronalds definitely got resistance in answering, he even hangs up when he doesnt like the questions. Misty misses answering some questions, at least the first time, and stalls for time. There might be several reasons for that. However, she defines the huh factor. The dispatcher asks Ronald only two questions, so theres not enough data to say if hes got the huh factor or not. Most of his contribution to the call is ranting that is not in response to any question. Misty does some repetition but not enough according to the criteria of repetition in this study: saying the same thing three times or more, eg. Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh my god. Conflicting facts, well, the location of the brick was confusing to the dispatcher. Also, she said it wasnt there when she was asleep which she wouldnt know.but I suppose she meant she didnt see it before she fell asleep. The pajamas and the familial relationships were false facts but the opposing information didnt come out during the 911 call so I dont think theyd have been flagged in Harpster et als study.)
-Extraneous information (well, the cleaning part stands out to me. Why does she say that? Otherwise theres not that much. Some passages where she starts to say something and then checks herself and starts again, I get the feeling she might have been about to launch into another cleaning or blanket story but decided not to. Obviously thats just conjecture.)
-Distancing measure, including acceptance of death dependent on whether there is a relationship between the caller and a victim (this is not applicable to the 911 call although I might mention that comment in an interview Id give my life for my childs life back) , possession of a problem (her problem is "I cant find our daughter", does that qualify?), inappropriate politeness (hi, umm
), insulting or blaming victim (not present in this 911 call), plea for caller only (yes for Ron, no for Misty who does no pleas whatsoever) and minimizing their own involvement before, after or during the event. (I just woke up, I was sleeping, I just came home, I was at work
Well, it might be true. Still, was it the most important information they could convey?)
****
Disclaimer: Please remember that the indicators are statistical pointers only and no indicator is exclusively found in guilty or innocent homicide calls. Also, the Haleigh 911 call did not report a homicide so some of the criteria identified in Harpster et als research may not be directly applicable. If either of the callers was intoxicated, it might also influence the analysis.
Sorry for the lengthy post and thanks for reading if you got this far. This is a slightly revised version of something I posted in the RT. I edited to fix links and make it clearer which parts were straight quotes and my paraphrases of Harpster et als ideas and which parts my twist on the 911 call based on their ideas. Theyre not to blame for any comments referring to Misty and Ron. Their article came out before Haleigh went missing. The Misty and Ron quotes and my paraphrases of them are based on this transcript:
Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community - View Single Post - 911 & LE Radio call/Police Report**REVISITED**
Anyway below is what one had to say about Ron's way of answering questions since the conversation here was going in that direction. In the meantime I will look for the correspnding video clip.
