Questioning the Validity of Junk Science

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Go to fetchpet. com slash saave right now for your free quote Fetchpet. com slash save Support for criminal comes from growth therapy Maybe you're dealing with anxiety, burnout or financial stress Whatever challenges you're facing, Gr therapy is here to help Gow accepts over one hundred and twenty five insurance plans Sessions averagage twenty one dollars with insurance and some pay as a little as zero depending on their plan Visit growthapy. com slash criminal today to get started That's growthraapy d. com slash criminal Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plans This episode contains recordings of nine hundred and eleven calls. and references to suicide Please use discretion You and Betsy meet How did we meet? Well, we actually met at a local gas station where she was working. And I was a regular customer there and we just started making friends, I guess, and eventually went out on a date What did you like about her our bubbly personality and she was just so outgoing and friendly with everyone she ever met. we would always chat. You know, kind of flirted around and whatnot. Russ Fia met Betsy Meyer in nineteen ninety five. On top of working at the gas station, Betsy ran a business deJing parties She called it party starters Russ helped her out. He was good with computers In two thousand Russ and Betsy got married. She was just always a positive person, even when she felt bad. So other than when we were alone in private, most people wouldn't know You know, if she was feeling bad or sad at all When did you find out about her cancer That was in twenty ten, early twenty ten We didn't know how bad it was or any of the prognosis as far as what needed to be done and how it was going to be treated She had to have a full mastectomy and chemo and radiation treatment. and that was quite intensive After about a year of going in for treatments, once a week, sometimes twice Betsy and Russ plan to go on a cruise. it looked like Betsy's cancer was gone And they were calling it a celebration of life. They bought the tickets for November of twenty eleven But in October They got news. That's when we find out that the cancer had returned and it was actually in her liver And the doctor kind of told us at that time that she had about If we were lucky, maybe three years They decided to go on the cruise anyway How was How was she doing on the cruise and right after? she was doing quite well actually. She got to do one of her dreams, which was swim with the dolphins. And when we came home, you know, we were looking forward to Christmas. They spent Christmas with Russ's family and Betsy's father Betsy stayed at her mother's apartment outside Staint Louis the next night It was closer to the Ccer center And she had an appointment for Chemo onn Tuesday, december twenty seventh So I was at home by myself and got up in started work like any normal day I worked from home on a computer And we texted back and forth throughout the day because I had a u standing appointment with friends of mine and we like to get together and play games on Tuesday nights. I was trying to ascertain whether or not she needed to ride home afterwards and at some point or another she let me know that her friend Pam was going to bring her home, which that struck me as kind of odd, but said Okay, well, if she wants to bring you home, I guess that's fine and I'll see you there when I get done with my friends What is your usual Tuesday night with your friends? what do you do Well, we used to play some role playing games similar to D and D However, those type of games If you have a group of, say, four or five people that play, everybody has to be present And that particular night we had one friend that had to work And so we sat around and watched a couple of movies. Actually the second movie was kind of boring and so everybody decided to split Ross and Betsy had talked on the phone around five PM Russ got to his friend's house around six and left around nine. On the way home, he remembers he was hungry and stopped at RrB's He says when he got to the house, he called Betsy's name. didnn't hear anything. I came around the corner and that's when I saw her on the floor. Tell me what you saw Well, I saw. are laying in a pool of blood initially And when I went down to the floor, I realized that there was a knife in her neck Ross called nine hundred eleven and told the dispatcher, My wife killed herself She's on the floor I jumped to conclusions because she had gone through depression before and actually was on medication for depression and whatnot The nine hundred eleven dispatcher told Russ someone would be on the way and started asking questions She wanted to know what kind of medications she had and was directing me to try and find those. and read the labels off to her so she could get a list of those things thinking about. I mean Do you remember I think I was in one state or another of mental shock for quite a while. And so I was just kind of on automatic mode trying to follow instructions and help somebody actually physically showed up police about ten minutes to arrive st took me outside and I guess they were performing their initial investigation inside. and eventually They came out and asked me if I could come down to the station which I did and then they started questioning me about all the events of the day, who she was with, who brought her home, if she had any enemies or I guess that lasted overnight, the questioning and sometime the next day They decided and asked me if I could go take a lie detector test After the test, an officer told him that he'd failed it What were they saying exactly that you had done to Betsy They said that I stabbed her over fifty times And did they say why you had done that? They said that evidently I had found a change of beneficiary on some insurance. and so I gotten angry and emotional and killed her for the money Four days before she died, Betsy had removed Russ as the beneficiary on her life insurance policy On january fourth, Russ was charged with first degree murder He was put in jail And his trial began almost two years later in november twenty thirteen The prosecutor, Leah Cheney argued that Russ had killed Betsy soon after he got home then showered then called nine hundred eleven Leah Cheney played the recording of Russ's call for the jury It was the first time he'd heard it. wasasn't like hearing it played back It was quite emotional Um brought back all the feelings and everything that I was going through at the time Leah Cheney called the nine hundred and eleven supervisor to testify. And what did the nine hundred eleven super Visor say in their testimony She tried to say that u It sounded like I was acting it out She hadn't answered Russ's call But she listened to the recording She said that Russ seemed hysterical until he was answering a question And then it would go back to hysteria again K County nine hundred eleven is the location of your emergency need you to take a couplety the address where you need to I so. Okay, what what is the tell K with What's going on there? got home from her inside Thank H He in the hriver Okay, Russell, I need you to countalm down, honey, okay I need you to cal down, take a couple deep breaths. We're gonna get somebody on the way there, okay around five So just got back. But she was at her mom's and every friend was bringing her home I No no what time she got home She she's in the room lately She has that she does' have cans Do you think that she's beyond health right now officers that are out there right now, can you do me a favor and open your front door Okay, well good luck to you, honey. I'm going to go ahead and hang up and we're gonna try to callllow your mom, okay. All right Okay. Bye bye One of the first officers to get to Russ in Betsy's house said it seemed like Russ was panicking. having difficulty talking and breathing. When the officer tried to distract him talking about where they grew up in the same neighborhood Rus spoke normally and sometimes laughed Police noted that when they left Rus alone, His emotions seemed quote, Over the top The trial lasted four days And Russ Faria was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole I'm Phoebe Judge. 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For the first time ever, you can try Netsuite nextxt for free If your revenues are at least in the seven figures, go to netsuiteai. com slash criminal Built for every industry ready for every boardroom, netssuite. Ai slash criminal In June of two thousand eight The FBI published volume seventy seven, issue number six of their monthly bulletin It's sort of this newsletter that's sent directly to police departments. I think it has something like a readership of two hundred thousand Journalist Brett Murphy The bulletin featured an article with the title nine hundred and eleven homicide calls and statement analysis is the caller, the killer The article said that nine hundred eleven calls to report a death contain, quote, uncontaminated. and that specific features of a call can help identify whether a caller is innocent or guilty Certain ts of phrase, different omissions, cues became indndicators of guilt, guilty indicators. If someone callalls nine hundred and eleven and they say one of these things or they don't say one of these things then it means that it's more likely that they are guilty of the crime that they are calling to report. Today, Bret is a reporter for Pro publica But in twenty twenty one, he was working for USA today on a series of stories about whistleblowers in police departments. I was on the road somewhere outside Louisiana And I met with a woman who was telling me all about this really upsetting case The woman's mother had died Police said it looked like suicide But the woman believed it was a murder by her stepfather And she kept mentioning this new thing called nine hundred and eleven call analysis and saying H stepfather had called police and he had failed this analysis is called a cOopP scale The nine hundred and eleven cop scale an abbreviation for considering offender probability in statements appeared on page twenty seven of the FBI buulletin It was the title of a one page worksheet with a list of checkbxes organized in two columns labeled Innocent callers and guilty callers The article was written by an FBI agent named Susan Adams. and an Ohio deputy police chief A man named Tracy Harpster Susan and Tracey met in two thousand four. at the FBI Academy in Virginia Tracy was there for a ten week training And Susan was there to lecture. She had written a dissertation a few years earlier on studying in quote Linguistic and structural features of written statements to predict whether someone was telling the truth Soon after the training, Tracy Harpster started a master's program in criminal justice PS Susan Adams to help with this thesis. They collected these nine hundred and eleven calls that included fifty People who were later convicted of some sort of crime and fifty people who were not. Together they analyzed the hundred calls, looking for patterns In the summary of their findings in the FBI bulletin, they wrote that guilty callers tended to give quote Rambling information Another indicator was insulting or blaming the victim or asking for help for themselves person who died Police and prosecutors immediately seem interested in this research. Oh yeah People really loved it. It was originally just what researchers call an exploratory analysis meaning There's a lot more research needed to see if it's valid and sound and should be applied in real world situations, but this kind of just took off right from that exploratory analysis After the bulletin came out, a sheriff's sergeant in Colorado asked Tracy and Susan to help with the case she was working on She sent a recording of a woman calling nine hundred and eleven saying her husband had died they replied with a report They'd found one indicator of innocence and twelve indicators of guilt Things like saying the word blood instead of saying bleeding They wrote, quote Callars who chose to comment on the presence of blood at the scene, rather than on the condition of the victim 're more likely to be guilty The focus appears to be on the bloody scene rather than on her bleeding husband They also wrote that the woman had, quote, no sense of urgency and was too patient saying things like, I'm sorry and thank you. That's what they would call being inappropriately polite. If you interrupt yourself, if your answers are too short, too long, saying somebody you know, that means there's a lack of commitment Harpster and Adams said that witnesses to a crime should be able to report their observations clearly They wrote that the woman quote, hesitated to commit to her narrative They noted that she said God who would do this which they found to be, quote a curious and unexpected question. Investigators kept asking Tracy Harpster for help And he started teaching classes. Listening to more calls book about it and hit the road, training police departments, prosecutors, corners nine hundred eleven dispatchers on this system that he developed In twenty fourteen, police in Aspen, Colorado were investigating the death of a woman named Nancy Fister Nancy's friend, Kathy Carpenter had called nine hundred and eleven She said she hadn't heard from Nancy for a few days And she'd gone looking for her She told the dispatcher she found Nancy dead in her closet and the local police asked the Colorado Bureau of Investigation to help find who did it And then there was an agent at CBI who was one of Harpster's students He stepped in to help analyze the phone call B. B. nine hundred eleven, what is the address of the emergency What is the address of the emergency that a house business or apartment H go M'am tell me exactly what happened. My Myad had in his closet. Ma'am, tell me exactly what happened We came back from first we have seenty sures. some people living there. She really they all And they th today as with our owing money and I don't know it in the house and she hadn't been around. so I went up there to get the dog was looking for her I need you to tell me exactly what happened C my s it in your closet in her closet. Yes Okay, stay on the line with me. We're going to send help Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent. wrote a report analyzing Kathy Carpenter's call She noted that Carpenter had said, helpelp me She repeatedly interrupted herself. She didn't immediately answer when the dispatcher asked for the address She provided extraneous information about Fleiser's dog While the phone was ringing, Kathy repeated, Oh my God, o my God which the agent found suspicious writing quote The caller gives repetitive phrases even before the dispatcher answers the call He wrote The caller's very first statement is to request help for herself Qote, The caller repeated her friend was dead and full of blood. He also wrote, quote, Innocent callers typically minimize the injury and rarely comment about the amount of blood unless the victim is currently bleed. In total, the agent found thirty nine guilty indicators and zero indicators of innocence. days after he sent the report, Police arrested Kathy Carpenter. She was in jail for three months before someone else confessed to the murder It was one of Nancy's tenants. the ones Kathy talked about when she called nine hundred and eleven This totally upended her life, she told me She lost her job Lost her home, car was repoded. diagnosed with PTSD, had to move in with her mother across the state. People still call her a murderer and she was just trying to live the rest of her life in solitude We'll be right back. comes from Shopify Before starting a business, lots of people experienced self doubt At some point, every business owner has thought, What if I fail? or what if no one listens to what I have to say or cares about what I sell? 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Here Car, come out, come out wherever you are. Please. With GeIico, you can use the app to easily manage all your policies in one place. Did this parking lot have a waterfall? I think you've wandered too far, mate? It feels good to find what you're looking for. It feels good to Geico The year after police dropped charges against Kathy Carpenter Russ Faria was granted a new trial in Missouri. He'd been in prison for two years after a jury ruled he murdered his wife Batsy. His lawyer had presented new evidence about another potential suspect Betsy's friend Cam hop The woman who had given her a ride that day In the new trial, Russa's lawyer called the nine hundred eleven operator, who answered his call to testify. And in her opinion, you't I wasn't play acting at all A TV station in St. Louis broadcast an interview with the operator Tammy Vagh You can't fake that You can't fake that. emotion my in my personal opinion, you can't. Vaugh says nine hundred and eleven operators are expected to get hysterical callers to answer questions. It's a redirection. It's a technique that communicators use to try to redirect calm them down, ask them the question, and then whenever they have to focus back on the victim or the patient, then they do what's called a refreak Prosecutor, Leah Cheney Call the nine hundred and eleven supervisor from the first trial to testify again This time, the supervisor said that she'd learn to evaluate calls like Russ's from Tracy Harpster's class. And she was saying all the reasons that she thought F Ryo was guilty based on his word choice and demeanor during the nine hundred eleven call Brett Murphy But the judge in the second trial wouldn't let the supervisor's testimony in his evidence The new verdict was announced on a Friday. I was completely free, found not guilty on all counts and completely exonerated Leah Cheney didn't charge anyone else with Betsy's murder But Russa's lawyer asked the U. S. attttorney's office to review the case He wanted someone to look more closely at Pam Hop When Betsy removed Russ as the beneficiary on her life insurance, she had replaced him with Pam Ham and Betsy had met his coworkers at State Farm Betsy's sister said Pam was instructed to use the life insurance to support Betsy's daughters from a previous relationship which she had not been doing What did you think of her I thought she was a little weird you know, there's a lot of people like that in this world. and I really certainly didn't suspector of being somebody that is malicious at all In twenty sixteen, Pam Hup was arrested and charged with killing a man named Louis Gumpenberger She was sentenced to life in prison without parole Then, in twenty twenty one, she was charged with Betsy's murder. There hasn't been a trial yet It is suspected and Pam is alleged to have done that, she will be facing trial In January of twenty twenty eight first said murder Since Russ was released, he's opened a motorcycle shop and gotten married He' ssays strange how many people have heard his nine hundred eleven call been played on dateline Six times now and I don't know how many times on local news and That's one of the things that people that I meet and that recognize me come up and They're just very emotional about having had listened to that call While reporter Brett Murphy was looking into nine hundred eleven call analysis He found emails Leia Cheney and Tracy Harpster had written each other after Russ was exonerated Harpster was looking for marketing material and a chapter in his upcoming book And he wrote to the prosecutor saying, Can you give me an endorsement, cite this case where you used it And he says in his email, we don't have to say it was overturned Just hook me up and make it sing. As I was working on this story, the months I was working on this, I listened to You know, I must listen to dozens, if not hundreds of nine hundred eleven calls Can you tell any difference?ould you know, from someone who's ultimately guilty as opposed to someone who someomeone claimed was guilty. No, I can't. I mean, I can't. it's to me it always seemed Like when I first heard about it when I was in Louisiana, I I thought it seemed Far fetched, but I don't know So I wanted to look into it, keep an open mind Um I thought I might come away with some ability to like predict one way or another, but I was never able. I mean there there would be people who have the flattest of AX. other people who seemed absolutely heartbroken and distraught and in shock and Trying to divine one way or another was it was like reading tea leaves If I were to call nine hundred eleven, I think the last thing on my mind be that someone potentially was going to listen to that call and look at me as a suspect depending on what words I chose to use. This was another concern of Law enforcement and prosecutors I talk to, there would be a chilling a fact right People if they were worried that The' word choice. might implicate them that they might not want to call nine hundred and eleven. don't Like, D don't get me wrong, there nine hundred and eleven calls are crucially important to a homicide investigator. It's kind of like the first record starts the timeline you can check what someone said versus facts that come up later. it's a critical piece of evidence for you know for a number of reasons to use it in this way deeply concerning to the people I spoke with who live and work in this world There was one nine ele one call in Ohio. There was a couple parents wailing on the phone. They were holding their child who had died. Harpster listened to the call And he wrote back to the police officers sent it to him. He said, callall me dot dot dot dirty, like the parents were dirty and he didn't like their nine hundred eleven call The mother who was on the phone in that case was never charged, right? So this's like these cases keep appearing in my research where It was applied, the nine hundred eleven call analysis was applied in some way, but didn't work, the person was acquitted or never charged. And this never seemed to be evidence that maybe there was something wrong with the thing But on the flip side, anytime nine hundred and eleven call analysis was used and that person was later charged or convicted, that was evidence that it works Do you ever get a chance to interview him Yeah, so I talked to him once on the phone. It was one kind of short conversation. I raised, you know, a couple questions and concerns from some folks I'd been talking to at that early stage I I could not get in touch with them Brett says he sent him emails and texts for months He'd ask Tracy Harpster if he could sit in on one of his classes He said no, it was only for law enforcement I asked him, I was like, whyy can't I sit in? but was he's very protective of it He told me that, you know other people would use it for nefarious ends People would start gaming their nine hundred and eleven calls So he interviewed, a former student of Tracy's and asked what it was like There's a projector screen up top is the caller, the killer and bold red font, kind of looks like dripping blood And he claims that one in three people who call nine hundred and eleven to report a death are actually murderers I never found any record to support that figure We contacted Tracy Harpster for the story And he sent a response which includes the following quote We are not aware of any individual who's been arrested or prosecuted for murder solely based on a nine hundred and eleven call The nine hundred eleven call is but one piece of evidence that should be closely examined just like any other I think it's important to say that from what I can tell in his What he tells students and what people have who have attended the class told me is that he really believes in this. He really thinks that he is helping these cases and bringing bringing murdrs to justice And it's a kind of invaluable instrument for police and prosecutors to kind of help them solve otherwise potentially unslolvable cases. So I never got the sense that he was operating in bad faith in any way or thought he was selling snake oil or anything, sort of his life's work It spoke with an FBI behavioral scientist who had worked with Tracy and Susan on the research. He told me, I just don't see that this the work we did rises to the level of success by the scientific community. There's no definitive answer as to whether this is useful. And everyone that I know of has kind of failed to reproduce most of his findings, which has kind of, in their mind sort of invalidated the research quite a bit Researchers at universities and the FBI have tried and failed to find evidence that the nine hundred eleven cOP scale method can reliably identify guilty callers But in twenty twenty two, when Brett was investigating Some police and prosecutors still seem to be using it There's not really like a governing body that's supposed to be vetting science or purported science that's getting adopted in the courtroom and works a lot on prerecedent. you know, if it makes its way into one case, then an attorney can cite that case which is sort of the opposite of how science works. Science change is based on new information all the time But Conversely, the court system works on precedent So what's supposed to be happening is that there's supposed to be something like a a standard applied. it's called the Daubert standard or the Frey standard in which judges are supposed to evaluate whether it stands up to scrutiny The Daubert standard from a nineteen ninety three Supreme Court case involving a pharmaceutical company says that judges should look at an expert's methods to determine whether to allow them to testify not just their credentials. There's all sorts of bencharks it's supposed to hit Has there been other studies that replicate the findings Pretty much is it sound Bret reported that in twenty sixteen, the Missouri prosecutor, Leah Chaney, wrote an email to Tracy Harpster Of course, the line of research is not recognized as a science in our state. She said she was finding ways to use nine hundred eleven call analysis in court anyway Cat gettinget creative without calling it science often prorosecutors were they would have a detective or a dispatcher testify. Harpster himself wouldn't And unless a defense attorney catches that this is, hey, that's not lay testimony. That actually sounds like scientific or fact testimony. I want to challenge that for a Dubert hearing or something like that. If an objection like that isn't raised, then it might slip right through and get right in front of a jury Murphy says sometimes judges would let nine hundred and eleven call analysis in as evidence because the state training board had certified Tracy Harbster's class And I would go to those state trading boards and they said, Well, we're not actually vetting the curriculum In one case, in twenty fourteen in Michigan A sixteen year old named Riley Spitler had called nine eleven and said that he'd shot his older brother while playing with a gun S Police and prosecutors say he did it on purpose Fitler always maintained that it was an accident And the difference, of course, is, you know, manslaughter and murder A detective on the case had taken Tracy Harpster's class I saw the checklist that he he filled out. the detective filled out And I listen to the call. Spitler is seems to me kind of to be in shock, you saw being hysterical he told dispatchers that he shot his brother. He said it was an accident twice it was an accident This was extraneous information By saying the shooting was accidental is indicator of guilt. quote, because the call should be about help not about justifying actions U at another point, Riley says, his life is over. Oh my God, my life is over saying something like My Life is over shows that Riley was too focused on himself and not his brother That's what the detective said, It was very me focused And then finally, Rileilly said, I think I killed him And this is before he starts kind of breaking down. He says, Oh my God, please know Multiple times in that call, Riley said he thought his brother was dead. The detective wrote that this is a guilty indicator because He was accepting his brother's death I mean, I listened to this nine hundred eleven call also I don't understand. I mean, it's confusing to know how you could even look for patterns and anything because Riley is he's so upset that you can barely understand what he's saying Yeah, he was, I mean, just to put into some perspective, Riley was having so much trouble thinking in this moment. he couldn't figure out how to open his own door to his house from the inside And he punched his hand through the glass door to open the door And this is, I think, sort of at Is that the heart of this nine and eleven call analysis where There's just not enough known about how people speak during moments of trauma or shock. A lot of people don't even recognize themselves They have no memory of saying that thing that they said on a nine hundred and eleven call, they have no memory of doing certain things that they were doing during the nine hundred and eleven call. you know, you are you are kind of outside of yourself And it's one thing to have a hunch about someone because you think they and police do this all the time, right? Because you think they're They're acting odd, but to lend the air of science and ly these indicators of guilt That takes it to this like other level in which it starts becoming something really dangerous Riley Spitler appealed his case on the basis of police, prosecutor, and judge misconduct and argued that the statement analysis used against him was quote Junk science He won was resentenced for manslaughter and released from prison in twenty twenty He was twenty one P is created by Lauren Sporer and me Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer prodroducers are Susanna Roobbertson, Jackie Jico, Lily Clark, and Lena Sillison This episode is fact checked by Katie Cederor Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. You can find a link to Brett Murphy's reporting about nine hundred eleven call analysis for Pro Publica on our website This isn't the first time we've had a pro publica journalist on criminal to talk about their investigative reporting. Often, their stories stand out to us And they just started a new podcast last month The show is called Paper Trail. If you're a fan of criminal, there's a good chance you'll like it The first episode is a story about generic medications and things going wrong at the factories they come from And they have other episodes out and coming up about health insurance denials, national security, the courts, and more