IA IA - Elizabeth Collins, 8, & Lyric Cook, 10, Evansdale, 13 July 2012 - #33

[Squeeze]

Clearly lots of publicity is appropriate for many cases. It does not follow that it's the most appropriate approach in all cases.

Absolutely.

 

[Foxfire]

http://www.bhcso.org/UserFiles/docs/Press Update 071113.pdf

Black Hawk County IA Sheriff's Dept - One year anniversary Missing Cousins update 07/11/2013

<sniped - read more>
At this time there is no new information that we can release to the public.

_______________________

'The American public is a very valuable investigative resource to squander by the use of the antiquated close to the vest silence investigative strategy of the last century. Silence by LE via ms media/internet only causes innocent victim's lives lost and mounting cold cases'...imo..

 

[Marilynilpa]

:bump:

 

[Grainne Dhu]

'The American public is a very valuable investigative resource to squander by the use of the antiquated close to the vest silence investigative strategy of the last century. Silence by LE via ms media/internet only causes innocent victim's lives lost and mounting cold cases'...imo..

SBM

Depends on the case. I don't see any way in which a general policy can be formulated.

In the Evelyn Miller case, LE made it clear who their chief suspect was even though they never named him as either a suspect or person of interest. Keeping information out of the public eye turned out to be the crucial strategy in building a case against the man now charged with her murder.

With Elizabeth and Lyric's case, what if there just isn't all that much evidence? Releasing it all would then absolutely preclude the strategy of waiting to see who betrayed knowledge of the circumstances that only the killer would have.

 

[Foxfire]

SBM

Depends on the case. I don't see any way in which a general policy can be formulated.

In the Evelyn Miller case, LE made it clear who their chief suspect was even though they never named him as either a suspect or person of interest. Keeping information out of the public eye turned out to be the crucial strategy in building a case against the man now charged with her murder.

With Elizabeth and Lyric's case, what if there just isn't all that much evidence? Releasing it all would then absolutely preclude the strategy of waiting to see who betrayed knowledge of the circumstances that only the killer would have.

Grainne Dhu, imo the one year anniversary update of L & L's abduction by the BHCSD is an indicator or barometer of the strategy/policy utilized in their abduction investigation. It was only a couple of weeks before, when the info/description of the white VOI was released to the public. Although this critical info was known very early in the investigation, it was held close to the vest. This investigation is analogous to the Billy Smolinski(CT) investigation, imo. The shattered vase theory applies...

http://waterburyobserver.org/node/402
Shattered - The Seven Year Search For Billy Smolinski Jr

Picture the murder of Billy Smolinski as a crystal vase. Hold it in your hands. Spin it around. Now drop it on the kitchen floor and watch it shatter into a thousand pieces. Each shard of glass represents a clue into who killed Billy on August 24th, 2004. When patched together the vase reveals the gruesome truth of who murdered Billy, and why. The vase points to the spot Billy is buried in the Naugatuck Valley.

In the best of circumstances it would take a master craftsman to cobble that broken vase back together, but what if the glass is left on the floor for weeks, for months, for seven years? Glass gets kicked around into the living room, the dining room and gets jammed into the rubber soles of your shoes and is transported into the yard, into town, and across state borders.

You send investigators into each room to collect glass, but shockingly they refuse to share what they gather with the other investigators. With ego and selfishness erupting all around you, what are the chances of ever getting that vase glued back together?

<sniped - read more>
_______________________________


http://wcfcourier.com/news/evansdal...cle_bc5363a2-dcf1-11e2-be6a-001a4bcf887a.html

New and old tips led to new appeal in abducted cousins case, chief says
June 25, 2013

According to a press release from the Black Hawk County Sheriff&#8217;s Office, investigators have received witness information that a white, older model, full-size SUV-type vehicle was parked on or near the lake along Arbutus Avenue near Meyers Lake on July 13, the day the girls went missing.
<sniped - read more>
________________

Black Hawk County IA Sheriff's Dept - One year anniversary Missing Cousins update 07/11/2013

<sniped - read more>
At this time there is no new information that we can release to the public.

 

[threecrazykids]

I know this is a far stretch...but I did find it quite odd when just perusing threads I noticed that an "older white boxy" vehicle was apparently used in the abduction of Alexis Murphy as well.

ACTIVE SEARCH VA - Alexis Murphy, 17, Shipman, 3 Aug 2013 - **ARREST** - #3 - Websleuths Crime Sleuthing Community

Granted, there appears to be camo or something of the sort down the sides of this vehicle (which I would think have been noted if that were the case with the vehicle mentioned by LE with E&L's case)...but still a strange coincidence nonetheless.

 

[Marilynilpa]

Some people will do anything for an easy buck:

Scammers have reportedly been going door-to-door asking for donations for two cousins who went missing in Evansdale, Iowa and were found dead several months later.

http://wqad.com/2013/08/13/door-to-...nations-for-lyric-cook-and-elizabeth-collins/

 

[Squeeze]

I don't know if any of you have read about the Maria Ridulph case on cnn.com. Very interesting.

 

[Foxfire]

I don't know if any of you have read about the Maria Ridulph case on cnn.com. Very interesting.

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/08/09/natpkg-orig-taken-coldest-case-promo.cnn.html

<Trailer>
Life sentence closes oldest cold case
By Ann O'Neill, CNN
updated 1:01 PM EST, Tue December 11, 2012


<sniped - read more>
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/10/justice/oldest-cold-case-sentencing/

Sycamore, Illinois (CNN) -- Fifty-five years after Maria Ridulph vanished from a small-town street corner while playing in the snow, a former neighbor was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and killing the brown-eyed second-grader.

Jack Daniel McCullough, who was 17 and known as John Tessier back in 1957, was finally identified two years ago by Maria's childhood companion as "Johnny," the blond man with the ducktail haircut who offered the girls piggyback rides and carried Maria off into oblivion.

McCullough, who worked as a police officer for a time in Washington state, was convicted of child abduction and murder after a two-week trial in September. He continues to assert his innocence.

 

[Squeeze]

http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/us/2013/08/09/natpkg-orig-taken-coldest-case-promo.cnn.html

<Trailer>
Life sentence closes oldest cold case
By Ann O'Neill, CNN
updated 1:01 PM EST, Tue December 11, 2012


<sniped - read more>
http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/10/justice/oldest-cold-case-sentencing/

Sycamore, Illinois (CNN) -- Fifty-five years after Maria Ridulph vanished from a small-town street corner while playing in the snow, a former neighbor was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and killing the brown-eyed second-grader.

Jack Daniel McCullough, who was 17 and known as John Tessier back in 1957, was finally identified two years ago by Maria's childhood companion as "Johnny," the blond man with the ducktail haircut who offered the girls piggyback rides and carried Maria off into oblivion.

McCullough, who worked as a police officer for a time in Washington state, was convicted of child abduction and murder after a two-week trial in September. He continues to assert his innocence.

I finally finished the article, trying to read it on my breaks. Interesting in that several things came to light years later, such as the timeline shifting backward. And the fact that he did not use his train ticket that he purchased. Lots of holes in the story, but it just goes to show that if investigators go down the wrong path, what evidence is never discovered. Like the train ticket that was tucked behind a picture, the picture of John/Jack that was eventually used in the photo lineup. And his alibi was only corroborated by his parents. One question I don't get, though, is that he called his stepfather collect to come get him in Rockford. If he drove his car there - instead of taking the train - how did he get the car back? Then 55 years later, he suddenly remembers that he hitchhiked instead of taking the train. Yet his memory is "total recall."

 

[Grainne Dhu]

I finally finished the article, trying to read it on my breaks. Interesting in that several things came to light years later, such as the timeline shifting backward. And the fact that he did not use his train ticket that he purchased. Lots of holes in the story, but it just goes to show that if investigators go down the wrong path, what evidence is never discovered. Like the train ticket that was tucked behind a picture, the picture of John/Jack that was eventually used in the photo lineup. And his alibi was only corroborated by his parents. One question I don't get, though, is that he called his stepfather collect to come get him in Rockford. If he drove his car there - instead of taking the train - how did he get the car back? Then 55 years later, he suddenly remembers that he hitchhiked instead of taking the train. Yet his memory is "total recall."

BBM

Jack McCullough does seem sleazy, to say the least.

To be fair, though, his alibi for 6:57 pm did not rest solely on his parents' corroboration. The FBI did establish that there was a collect telephone call to the Tessier residence from Rockford and the telephone operator noted that it was from "John Tassier" which seems too close to "John Tessier" for it to have been anyone but their son.

The crucial question is the time Maria was abducted. Her mother drove down to the police station to report her missing (shades of Elizabeth and Lyric!) at 8:10 pm. From the account of the little girl who was with her at the time, it seems safe to infer that Maria's parents were told she had disappeared within (at most) five minutes of the actual abduction.

At the time, the assumption was that Maria had been abducted around 7 pm (which would completely rule out Tessier). As the investigation progressed, LE realised that Maria could have been abducted as early as 5:50 pm.

My question is: how long was it likely that the family and friends searched before turning to the police? They had heard her friend's story already because that is how they knew Maria was missing. Would they really search for 2 hours and 20 minutes before turning to the police? Or even for 1 hour and 50 minutes? It just seems to me that the family would not have waited quite so long, given the circumstances.

Maria's father was a little reluctant to call the police because Maria had once before gone missing and he'd called on that occasion only to have her come walking through the door before the search could really get going.

Wow, there really are some eerie similarities between Maria's case and that of Elizabeth and Lyric. Massive uncertainties about the timeline, her mother driving to the police station to report her missing, a previous false alarm disappearance, an extensive family search before turning to the police... very weird. But I think it also goes to show that some of the things that have been questioned about the behaviour of the families in Elizabeth and Lyric's case are not as unusual as they seem.

I have a real problem with the way the photo lineup was conducted. There's more than enough research to prove that the risk of a false positive ID is greatly increased if a photo lineup is conducted by showing the witness all of the photos at the same time. The risk of a false positive ID goes way down if the witness is told that the perp's picture may not be in the lineup and then is shown the photos one at a time, with each individual photo picked up before the next one is laid down.

The problem with a mass showing is that the witness is more likely to pick out the photo from the lineup that most closely resembles the person they saw in comparison to the other photos. When photos are shown individually, the witness compares them only to their memory of the person.

Once someone makes an identification from a photo lineup, their own assessment of their confidence in the ID goes up over time.

All the above would be why 75% of those exonerated by Project Innocence had cases where witness misidentification played a significant role in their initial convictions.

 

[Marilynilpa]

Another bump for the girls.

 

[Grainne Dhu]

I've been streaming videos while I spin yarn, which I can do without watching the yarn. I came on a series called The First 48 Hours which I'd never even heard of before. It's like Cops but focused on homicide investigations. It reminded me again of how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be.

In one episode, there was a shooting incident in a barbershop where one victim was found shot inside the barbershop and one victim was found dead in the parking lot outside the barbershop. Everyone inside the barbershop ducked and then escaped when the attack started, went into a nearby store and called 911. The witnesses were together while they waited for the police and while the police got the scene locked down.

When the police took their statements, the individual statements varied in details but were agreed on the general sequence of events: two men came into the barbershop, pulled one of the customers out of the barber chair, shot a lot of rounds and then left through the back of the shop. The different witnesses varied in when they realised something was wrong, when they noticed the attackers and when each of them managed to get out of the shop.

Seems pretty clearcut, right? Everyone assumed that the wounded victim in the shop was the guy in the chair at the beginning.

Well, the barbershop had cctv surveillance. They took the recording to the police station and ran it... and got a whole different story.

The first man came into the shop and sat down in a chair, got started on a haircut (I'll call him Victim since I can't recall his name). Two men then entered the shop first (called One and Two) and headed for Victim. As they were pulling Victim out of the chair, a third attacker (Three) came into the shop. None of the witnesses remembered seeing him, probably because they were already confused and panicked.

One threw Victim against the glass door of the shop, clearly attempting to injure him. Rather than breaking the glass, Victim sort of bounced off it and as he came off the glass, he reached under his shirt of pulled out a weapon (no one saw that). One and Two were already firing at him. Victim fired back and shot One through the hip, hit Two in the chest, then turned and ran out of the barbershop through the front door. Two and Three scrambled out of the barbershop through the back entrance. Two then collapsed in the parking lot and died while Three ran off.

The eyewitnesses, who were all within 10-15 feet of Victim when the incident happened, completely missed Victim's identity (they id'd One as Victim, the guy in the chair), missed seeing Three completely and missed that Victim had been shooting back.

Because the eyewitnesses had been together for probably 15-20 minutes before being separated, they had talked amongst themselves. Not in a conspiratorial sense but because they had been through a traumatic and terrifying event and they needed to emotionally process it. In talking together, they put together a narrative that made sense of what they had seen.

And that narrative did make sense. It's just that it was mistaken and they had thoroughly contaminated each other's memories. Several of the witnesses had passed within touching distance of Three, in fact close enough that their clothes may have brushed against Three but they were so terrified by that point that they didn't realise he was there.

Victim was clearly acting in self defence but if all the police had to rely on was the eyewitness testimony, that would not have been clear at all.

The eyewitnesses didn't strike me as bad people. Just ordinary people having an ordinary sort of day, doing an ordinary errand that suddenly turned into a chaotic life threatening event. They didn't mean to mislead the police and, in fact, were trying to be helpful.

It doesn't take chaos or fear for mistaken eyewitness testimony, either. People can do something completely ordinary and unremarkable and then be wrong in important details when quizzed on them immediately afterwards. During ordinary life, most people are aware of a multitude of sensations and thoughts, so the brain has filtres to keep us all from going mad due to sensory overload.

Human brains are also the most calorically demanding organ of the body and the caloric demand of the brain goes up substantially when thinking hard. The theory is that evolution favours developing habits, which allow the brain to direct our actions without increasing the caloric demands of the brain.

Everyone has habits not only of how we put on our shoes or brush our hair but for anything we do repeatedly. We don't remember the specifics of every single daily commute to work, we just have a general memory of how it goes and then maybe fill in a few details of a commute that goes a little differently than our habitual memory.

Our brains are tricky, tricky, tricky.

 

[Grainne Dhu]

I just remembered another Iowa case where the case was solved by investigators who kept a crucial piece of evidence secret: the killing of Dustin Wehde.

It was a staged home invasion by the supposed victim, Tracey Roberts (now known as Tracey Richter). She claimed that two men broke into her home and followed her into her bedroom where she dove into the corner between the wall and bed where the couple kept a gun safe. She was in a kneeling position facing the gun safe with her back to the home invader when she removed the gun and then fired twice blindly over her shoulder. She then got up, fired a few more shots into the home invader, who fell. She went to check on her children and as she was talking to them in the hallway she saw the home invader start to move so she shot him one last time.

She fired 11 shots that night and 9 of them hit her target. That would be really amazing for a Navy SEAL in a one on one gun fight, particularly the accuracy of the blind over the shoulder shots; it seems miraculous for a mother of three with no prior military or police training.

When police got to the scene, they found Dustin Wehde's car parked in the driveway with an obsolete computer packed neatly into the back (I've seen photos). There was also a notebook on the front seat of the car with six pages in Dustin Wehde's handwriting detailing a narrative that implicated Roberts' ex-husband (with whom she was in a bitter custody dispute) as hiring Wehde to kill her. The notebook had details in it that Dustin Wehde could not have known unless someone else had told him (such as her ex's ambition to be a plastic surgeon before going into his present specialty; not exactly the sort of stuff you can google).

Investigators kept the notebook as a secret. For ten years. It turned into a cold case because investigators could not find the second perp nor could they find any connection whatsoever between Dustin Wehde (who lived in Iowa) and Roberts' ex-husband.

Within a few weeks of the incident, Roberts told her best friend that she (Roberts) suspected the person behind the horrible crime was her ex-husband because of information that police had found in the notebook in the car.

According to the statements Roberts and her 11 year old son made that night, there is no way Roberts could have seen or known about the notebook.

When the case was looked at again as a cold case, that information jumped out. Also things like the fact that in a house full of current computers and other valuable consumer goodies, the only thing taken was one obsolete Packard Bell. The fact that nothing was tipped over or broken in a running fight for her life. Except for the blood and bullet holes, her bedroom was completely neat and tidy. The fact that the victim's wounds did not match the actions described by Roberts (how do you shoot someone in the back of the head when they are facing you?). The fact that one home invader was wearing a ski mask but Roberts was able to provide a description of his face.

There were rationalisations for all of it... except Roberts' knowledge of the existence of the notebook and the contents of the notebook.

I'm relieved to say that Richter is now serving life in prison for the death of Dustin Wehde. I believe Richter is truly a danger to society because she discovered a way to make her troubles go away and get away with it.

 

[SpringThyme]

I just remembered another Iowa case where the case was solved by investigators who kept a crucial piece of evidence secret: the killing of Dustin Wehde.

It was a staged home invasion by the supposed victim, Tracey Roberts (now known as Tracey Richter). She claimed that two men broke into her home and followed her into her bedroom where she dove into the corner between the wall and bed where the couple kept a gun safe. She was in a kneeling position facing the gun safe with her back to the home invader when she removed the gun and then fired twice blindly over her shoulder. She then got up, fired a few more shots into the home invader, who fell. She went to check on her children and as she was talking to them in the hallway she saw the home invader start to move so she shot him one last time.

She fired 11 shots that night and 9 of them hit her target. That would be really amazing for a Navy SEAL in a one on one gun fight, particularly the accuracy of the blind over the shoulder shots; it seems miraculous for a mother of three with no prior military or police training.

Snipped
it.

Why did she kill Wehde?

 

[Grainne Dhu]

Why did she kill Wehde?

Prosecutors believe she was trying to implicate her ex-husband in a murder-for-hire scheme. Dustin Wehde was a troubled 20 year old whose family attended the same church her family did that her husband had offered to mentor. They think she may have had a sexual relationship with Dustin but in any case, she did know him well and he was in and out of her home for about a year prior to the fake home invasion.

Prosecutors think that she dictated the 6 page note to Dustin and that the plan was for him to pretend to be a robber and she would stage an attempted strangling. She did have marks on her neck from the panty hose she claimed to have been strangled with but they looked more like the sort of marks you'd get by wrapping the legs around your own neck then sawing them back and forth a few times. More like friction marks than pressure marks.

Roberts was in a bitter custody dispute with her ex-husband over their son (the 11 year old). When the boy was 3 years old she alleged in family court that he came home from a visitation with his father with signs of sexual molestation, which was eventually ruled unfounded. Prosecutors think she wanted to go into family court and use an investigation into him as a suspect into a murder-for-hire plot to get the court to deny his father's visitation rights. Her second husband had called the ex and told him that he had "deep pockets" and was going to fund the custody fight in court until the ex gave up visitation.

Now, I don't know about you but if I believed my hypothetical child had been sexually molested by my hypothetical ex-husband, there is NO WAY I would ever voluntarily give that ex custody of my son. And yet that is exactly what Roberts did a couple years after the staged home invasion (this was long before she was suspected of homicide in Dustin's killing).

Prosecutors think that Roberts' plan all along was to get Wehde to conspire with her in this fake home invasion and to kill him so that he could not betray her if he changed his mind about conspiring with her.

Not so coincidentally, both her ex and her second husband said that Roberts had a history of domestic violence against them and had (on different occasions) threatened them with a hand gun. The first husband divorced her after an incident where she fired a bullet into the ceiling over his head.

Her second husband also divorced her and said it was because he feared for his life at her hands.

She was engaged when she was arrested for Dustin Wehde's killing. I think that guy was lucky, lucky, lucky.

 

[Marilynilpa]

Thanks for your posts, Grainne Dhu, and I'm glad you're feeling good enough to be spinning yarn!

 

[Squeeze]

BBM

Jack McCullough does seem sleazy, to say the least.

To be fair, though, his alibi for 6:57 pm did not rest solely on his parents' corroboration. The FBI did establish that there was a collect telephone call to the Tessier residence from Rockford and the telephone operator noted that it was from "John Tassier" which seems too close to "John Tessier" for it to have been anyone but their son.

The crucial question is the time Maria was abducted. Her mother drove down to the police station to report her missing (shades of Elizabeth and Lyric!) at 8:10 pm. From the account of the little girl who was with her at the time, it seems safe to infer that Maria's parents were told she had disappeared within (at most) five minutes of the actual abduction.

At the time, the assumption was that Maria had been abducted around 7 pm (which would completely rule out Tessier). As the investigation progressed, LE realised that Maria could have been abducted as early as 5:50 pm.

My question is: how long was it likely that the family and friends searched before turning to the police? They had heard her friend's story already because that is how they knew Maria was missing. Would they really search for 2 hours and 20 minutes before turning to the police? Or even for 1 hour and 50 minutes? It just seems to me that the family would not have waited quite so long, given the circumstances.

Maria's father was a little reluctant to call the police because Maria had once before gone missing and he'd called on that occasion only to have her come walking through the door before the search could really get going.

Wow, there really are some eerie similarities between Maria's case and that of Elizabeth and Lyric. Massive uncertainties about the timeline, her mother driving to the police station to report her missing, a previous false alarm disappearance, an extensive family search before turning to the police... very weird. But I think it also goes to show that some of the things that have been questioned about the behaviour of the families in Elizabeth and Lyric's case are not as unusual as they seem.

I have a real problem with the way the photo lineup was conducted. There's more than enough research to prove that the risk of a false positive ID is greatly increased if a photo lineup is conducted by showing the witness all of the photos at the same time. The risk of a false positive ID goes way down if the witness is told that the perp's picture may not be in the lineup and then is shown the photos one at a time, with each individual photo picked up before the next one is laid down.

The problem with a mass showing is that the witness is more likely to pick out the photo from the lineup that most closely resembles the person they saw in comparison to the other photos. When photos are shown individually, the witness compares them only to their memory of the person.

Once someone makes an identification from a photo lineup, their own assessment of their confidence in the ID goes up over time.

All the above would be why 75% of those exonerated by Project Innocence had cases where witness misidentification played a significant role in their initial convictions.

Yes, that's right. One of the solid pieces of evidence was the collect call. But, they couldn't pinpoint exactly where it was made. He still had plenty of time to drive to Sycamore and back and make the call, IF the timeline was pushed back.

And I agree about the similarities with Elizabeth and Lyrics case. Very eerie....

The photo lineup, yes, should have been done like you said. To place them all together seems to imply that ONE of them is the one she should pick.

I'm actually quite surprised that he was convicted if murder. There was no evidence that he did it, just that he was capable and if you moved the timeline back, he had no alibi for that timeframe. No physical evidence. Even his "confessions" didn't match the cause of death.

 

[Squeeze]

BBM

Jack McCullough does seem sleazy, to say the least.

To be fair, though, his alibi for 6:57 pm did not rest solely on his parents' corroboration. The FBI did establish that there was a collect telephone call to the Tessier residence from Rockford and the telephone operator noted that it was from "John Tassier" which seems too close to "John Tessier" for it to have been anyone but their son.

The crucial question is the time Maria was abducted. Her mother drove down to the police station to report her missing (shades of Elizabeth and Lyric!) at 8:10 pm. From the account of the little girl who was with her at the time, it seems safe to infer that Maria's parents were told she had disappeared within (at most) five minutes of the actual abduction.

At the time, the assumption was that Maria had been abducted around 7 pm (which would completely rule out Tessier). As the investigation progressed, LE realised that Maria could have been abducted as early as 5:50 pm.

My question is: how long was it likely that the family and friends searched before turning to the police? They had heard her friend's story already because that is how they knew Maria was missing. Would they really search for 2 hours and 20 minutes before turning to the police? Or even for 1 hour and 50 minutes? It just seems to me that the family would not have waited quite so long, given the circumstances.

Maria's father was a little reluctant to call the police because Maria had once before gone missing and he'd called on that occasion only to have her come walking through the door before the search could really get going.

Wow, there really are some eerie similarities between Maria's case and that of Elizabeth and Lyric. Massive uncertainties about the timeline, her mother driving to the police station to report her missing, a previous false alarm disappearance, an extensive family search before turning to the police... very weird. But I think it also goes to show that some of the things that have been questioned about the behaviour of the families in Elizabeth and Lyric's case are not as unusual as they seem.

I have a real problem with the way the photo lineup was conducted. There's more than enough research to prove that the risk of a false positive ID is greatly increased if a photo lineup is conducted by showing the witness all of the photos at the same time. The risk of a false positive ID goes way down if the witness is told that the perp's picture may not be in the lineup and then is shown the photos one at a time, with each individual photo picked up before the next one is laid down.

The problem with a mass showing is that the witness is more likely to pick out the photo from the lineup that most closely resembles the person they saw in comparison to the other photos. When photos are shown individually, the witness compares them only to their memory of the person.

Once someone makes an identification from a photo lineup, their own assessment of their confidence in the ID goes up over time.

All the above would be why 75% of those exonerated by Project Innocence had cases where witness misidentification played a significant role in their initial convictions.

Yes, that's right. One of the solid pieces of evidence was the collect call. But, they couldn't pinpoint exactly where it was made. He still had plenty of time to drive to Sycamore and back and make the call, IF the timeline was pushed back.

And I agree about the similarities with Elizabeth and Lyrics case. Very eerie....

The photo lineup, yes, should have been done like you said. To place them all together seems to imply that ONE of them is the one she should pick.

I'm actually quite surprised that he was convicted if murder. There was no evidence that he did it, just that he was capable and if you moved the timeline back, he had no alibi for that timeframe. No physical evidence. Even his "confessions" didn't match the cause of death.

 

[Squeeze]

I've been streaming videos while I spin yarn, which I can do without watching the yarn. I came on a series called The First 48 Hours which I'd never even heard of before. It's like Cops but focused on homicide investigations. It reminded me again of how unreliable eyewitness testimony can be.

In one episode, there was a shooting incident in a barbershop where one victim was found shot inside the barbershop and one victim was found dead in the parking lot outside the barbershop. Everyone inside the barbershop ducked and then escaped when the attack started, went into a nearby store and called 911. The witnesses were together while they waited for the police and while the police got the scene locked down.

When the police took their statements, the individual statements varied in details but were agreed on the general sequence of events: two men came into the barbershop, pulled one of the customers out of the barber chair, shot a lot of rounds and then left through the back of the shop. The different witnesses varied in when they realised something was wrong, when they noticed the attackers and when each of them managed to get out of the shop.

Seems pretty clearcut, right? Everyone assumed that the wounded victim in the shop was the guy in the chair at the beginning.

Well, the barbershop had cctv surveillance. They took the recording to the police station and ran it... and got a whole different story.

The first man came into the shop and sat down in a chair, got started on a haircut (I'll call him Victim since I can't recall his name). Two men then entered the shop first (called One and Two) and headed for Victim. As they were pulling Victim out of the chair, a third attacker (Three) came into the shop. None of the witnesses remembered seeing him, probably because they were already confused and panicked.

One threw Victim against the glass door of the shop, clearly attempting to injure him. Rather than breaking the glass, Victim sort of bounced off it and as he came off the glass, he reached under his shirt of pulled out a weapon (no one saw that). One and Two were already firing at him. Victim fired back and shot One through the hip, hit Two in the chest, then turned and ran out of the barbershop through the front door. Two and Three scrambled out of the barbershop through the back entrance. Two then collapsed in the parking lot and died while Three ran off.

The eyewitnesses, who were all within 10-15 feet of Victim when the incident happened, completely missed Victim's identity (they id'd One as Victim, the guy in the chair), missed seeing Three completely and missed that Victim had been shooting back.

Because the eyewitnesses had been together for probably 15-20 minutes before being separated, they had talked amongst themselves. Not in a conspiratorial sense but because they had been through a traumatic and terrifying event and they needed to emotionally process it. In talking together, they put together a narrative that made sense of what they had seen.

And that narrative did make sense. It's just that it was mistaken and they had thoroughly contaminated each other's memories. Several of the witnesses had passed within touching distance of Three, in fact close enough that their clothes may have brushed against Three but they were so terrified by that point that they didn't realise he was there.

Victim was clearly acting in self defence but if all the police had to rely on was the eyewitness testimony, that would not have been clear at all.

The eyewitnesses didn't strike me as bad people. Just ordinary people having an ordinary sort of day, doing an ordinary errand that suddenly turned into a chaotic life threatening event. They didn't mean to mislead the police and, in fact, were trying to be helpful.

It doesn't take chaos or fear for mistaken eyewitness testimony, either. People can do something completely ordinary and unremarkable and then be wrong in important details when quizzed on them immediately afterwards. During ordinary life, most people are aware of a multitude of sensations and thoughts, so the brain has filtres to keep us all from going mad due to sensory overload.

Human brains are also the most calorically demanding organ of the body and the caloric demand of the brain goes up substantially when thinking hard. The theory is that evolution favours developing habits, which allow the brain to direct our actions without increasing the caloric demands of the brain.

Everyone has habits not only of how we put on our shoes or brush our hair but for anything we do repeatedly. We don't remember the specifics of every single daily commute to work, we just have a general memory of how it goes and then maybe fill in a few details of a commute that goes a little differently than our habitual memory.

Our brains are tricky, tricky, tricky.

I have watched that show many times. The narrator's soothing voice had lulled me to sleep more than once. I haven't seen that particular episode, though.

Interesting when you mention the witnesses taking amongst themselves. Makes you wonder, in E & Ls case, how many stories changed during the investigation, when people compared notes?? Take for example, Mr. C, the Lawn Watering Guy, changing his timeline of seeing the girls, after talking to his wife...