As a sahm myself, I could not agree more. Most mothers develop a keen sense for lies and sketchy stories and scenarios that don't quite sound right, and they usually have fairly sharp observation skills - the proverbial "eyes in the back of the head." Quite often the job of Mom requires being able to think fast in any situation, and come up with diplomatic answers to soothe the most highly irrational and notoriously impatient people (toddlers and teenagers.)
That's one thing that's always bothered about Patsy talking about the heart on JB's hand, saying one day that she'd seen it and it was well-drawn, then announcing at the beginning of the interview first thing the very day that she had been mistaken and hadn't seen it after all, but must have read about it in the autopsy report (the same one her husband said they didn't read.)
How could she know how well-drawn it was to comment on that specific aspect of it if she'd never seen it...and didn't she have a less transparent way to correct the blunder she'd made it admitting she'd seen it than by using a tactic that is on the level of a grade school child? Who didn't see right through that?
I can guarantee you a sahm mom, or probably any mom present at that interview, would have zeroed in on that obvious attempt to do a complete turn-around and deny having actually seen it when she just said she had (and close/long enough to judge how well drawn it was) and asked Patsy the necessary questions to figure out if she saw it or not.
It's like this: suppose my 12 yr old daughter's teacher calls...some girls were caught passing notes, and it looks like my daughter was involved, but not clear. As I drive my daughter to school, I ask her about the note the teacher seized, and she tells me something she would only know if she had seen it herself - "It was written in very good penmanship." She goes to school and talks to her friends. They confer with each other, figuring out who knows what, who was asked what and by whom, what story was bunk and how to fix it, and by the time I pick my daughter up from school, she gets in the car and right away has a different story to tell. This time she tells me she was wrong - she hadn't seen the note after all, but she heard her teacher tell another teacher what it said in it.
First off, I'm tipped off that her story isn't right because she starts in on it without me even bringing it up. Obviously it's an issue of concern on her mind if it's the first thing she says as soon as she gets in the car. Second, it doesn't match with what she said yesterday...'what the note said'? She said it was written in very good penmanship...how do you go from knowing how well the letters were formed to only knowing the contents of the note by hearing one person rely the most basic info to another, without saying anything about the penmanship?
So then I'd be left asking myself...why is she changing her story? Why is she back-pedaling and denying she'd seen the note enough to assess a grade for penmanship, and why is it so important to her to start telling me that right away before I even ask her about it?
I think I know the answer in Patsy's case...she saw the heart, and admitted it when asked the first day. Then when she got done, she told JR and/or the attys what she'd said, and she realized she'd messed up bigtime by saying she'd not only seen the heart, but that she had got a good enough look to judge artistic ability...and then she was desperate enough to need to correct that admission that she either didn't realize or didn't care how obvious it was that she needed to change her story as soon as possible.
Wow, sorry for going on so long, but stuff that obvious in this case really boils my potatoes. Why weren't they tougher on the Rs? Why didn't they actually ask intense questions that require real answers that get somewhere, instead of make cordial conversation with them about the case and try to gain info in a round-about manner, taking care not upset poor, delicate, suffering, steel magnolia Patsy or cause stoic, detached JR to have to try to recall something clearly, or even know something about his own family?? ugh, like that interview with Smit where he practically supplies JR with the answers he wants to hear - what the hell. Send a woman in there, specifically a seasoned mother, and let her ferret out the plausible from the outright lies.
