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"I Talk to Killers, Rapists and Predators": Interviewing the Unimaginable, How and Why · Murders to Music: Crime Scene to Music Scene (Streamline Events and Entertainment)

• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to the Murders to Music podcast.
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: My name is Aaron, I'm your host and you guys are in for another great show.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Tonight's show is brought to you by a listener's question.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: I got a question this week that asked and it was talking about the show and one of the case reviews that I did and the question was how can you sit in that room and interview that person?
• 0:43
  Speaker 1: I would absolutely want to kill them.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: When we start talking about people who are committing the most heinous crimes child sexual abuse, murder, rape, these different crimes that I had the pleasure of working over the years when we start having to sit down with the people responsible for these crimes and talk to them about the things they've done to a loved one or the things they've done to a stranger or the split-second decisions they made that are going to change the course of their life when we have to sit down and start talking to the people about those things, it takes a certain skill and aptitude to make that happen.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: You know, sometimes we often hear and, like I just said, we often hear the people that said I absolutely couldn't do that.
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: I would kill them.
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: You know, thank God it's you and not me.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: I can't believe you had to sit down with these people and be nice to them.
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: You know, for me all of that was fairly easy to do 99.9% of the time, and I'll get into my interview philosophy and methods here in a second.
• 1:49
  Speaker 1: But you know, I liken it to when I talk to a defense attorney and I asked the defense attorney how in the world can you sit down with a client who, unless you are from a different planet, you know is guilty?
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: The facts are there, the case is there.
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: We don't put forward a case where it's not solid and you still get up in court and, with a straight face, defend them and make stuff up and expect people to buy it.
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: The difference is defense attorneys get to make things up and they get to create confusion and they are not sworn to tell the truth or actually even find the facts.
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: But on the law enforcement side we have to follow the facts.
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: We're not allowed to make something up and then plug the pieces in to fit whatever our theory is.
• 2:37
  Speaker 1: That is called a bias.
• 2:39
  Speaker 1: And if we go into a criminal investigation believing that we think this is what occurred X, y and Z and then we try to collect facts and gather pieces of information that fit our narrative, and that is absolutely the backwards way of doing it.
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: A criminal investigation must be led based on the facts and the evidence in front of you, and you have to follow those.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: You have to let the trail of evidence lead you to whoever is responsible for committing the crime, and when you deviate from that and you start putting human influence into it, now you start getting the Hollywood effect.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: Well, I saw this on a movie once Maybe it was, you know.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, the guy doesn't have a face and he's dead.
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: So the cartel skinned him because he's seen too much and they cut out his tongue.
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: No, he died on the side of the freeway and the animals ate him.
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: But all of a sudden we've seen those movies and we start plugging these pieces in, because that is what we want to do.
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: We want to sensationalize whatever it is.
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: Fact of the matter is follow the evidence and follow the facts of the matter is follow the evidence and follow the facts.
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: Once you have enough of those facts and evidence in front of you and you've identified a witness, a victim or a suspect, now it's time to go into that interview room and talk to them and get their side of the story, and typically I would always interview the suspect last.
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: I want to collect as many pieces of this puzzle as I can before I sit down and interview any suspect or confront anybody.
• 4:08
  Speaker 1: Now I'm not saying that I always did that.
• 4:11
  Speaker 1: Sometimes I would prematurely interview, sometimes I wouldn't have any information at all and I would go into a suspect, interview and challenge them, and sometimes I would do it prematurely because I made a mistake and I got ahead of myself and I wanted the excitement of interviewing the suspect.
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: You know, most of the time my suspects or my interviews were fruitful and provided great information and I got a lot of confessions over the years.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: But there's a way to do that and I think that's what the what the listener wanted to know was not so much the interview techniques, but how do you go about doing that.
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: And then how do you get those confessions?
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: How do you have somebody that has just committed again a heinous crime against their child, their loved one or a stranger, and then you get them into that interview room and they make a full confession, make a full confession.
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: Over the years, how many times have I heard oh, there's no way he's going to confess to that.
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: There's no way he confessed to that.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: You made that up.
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: But then we play back the video or the recording of it and, sure enough, in the suspect's his or her own words, they talk about the heinous things they did, they talk about the way it made them feel, they talk about why they did it and they talk about, you know, if they would go back, maybe they wouldn't make the same choice again.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: And they show some remorse for it.
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: And it's right there in their own words.
• 5:31
  Speaker 1: This is the interview process.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: So I'm going to tell you a little bit about it because I want to answer that listener's questions Kind of.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: The way I want to break this down is I want to talk to you a little bit about just the dynamics of that interview process, but then I want to tell you a couple of stories about different interviews, the way they went, and I'll give you a little background on the case and I won't spend a ton of time doing this, but I just I want you to understand how the techniques that I employed worked well in a real life environment.
• 6:02
  Speaker 1: So, first of all, there's different interview schools and techniques that you can go to and when you come out of those you feel really book smart, because the videos they show you and the case studies they show you oftentimes are set up or staged or it's just the absolute perfect set of circumstances.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: But more times than not these are staged interviews.
• 6:24
  Speaker 1: If I stage something, I can make the outcome be whatever I want it to be.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: But more times than not, if you just go in with one set of rules or one playbook to play by, you check off the boxes.
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: I did this, I did that, I did this, I did that.
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: You confront, they deny, and now you're stuck and you're lost and you don't know where to go from there.
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: And those interviews oftentimes will not result in a confession and I'm not saying every time.
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: But if you only have that one set of rules, so what do you do?
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: You go to another interview school when you go to that second interview school.
• 6:59
  Speaker 1: Now you've got a few more tools in the toolbox and, before you know it, over the years you've had the opportunity to go to three or four different schools and you have all of this information into this toolbox.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: Some of the information from the different schools of thought are the same.
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: Other information is not.
• 7:16
  Speaker 1: Some of it's conflicting.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: So, just like in any job situation you come into, you have three or four people to show you how to do the same task.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, you whittle it down and you have your way of doing it.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: You have your way of changing the light bulb and that is what's important.
• 7:33
  Speaker 1: As long as it works for you, based on your character, your conversation style, your approach, all of that is if it works for you, then you continue to go with it, as long as you're being legal and lawful and keeping case law in mind, so you're not violating anybody's right.
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: So there's a few things in an interview that you're absolutely not allowed to do.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: But really, in the law enforcement world, to be real, you can lie, you can make stuff up.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: To a certain extent, all of these things are fair game.
• 8:06
  Speaker 1: If you went in there and only told the suspect exactly what it is, that you know, that's it.
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: You tell them just the limited facts that you know, then you would probably never get a confession because going into it, you rarely go into an interview knowing 100%.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Besides the information, you go in and either do or don't tell them the first you have to treat, and as much as you don't want to, and I get it but you have to treat these suspects with some dignity, or these victims with dignity, or the witnesses, and you might think it's easy to treat witnesses and victims with some dignity and respect, but we don't get to pick our victims and we don't get to pick our witnesses.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: Sometimes the guy that fought us on the street yesterday, spit in our face, called us names.
• 8:52
  Speaker 1: Yesterday he was a suspect, today he's your victim or your witness in a crime and we have to strip away all that other stuff, all that baggage, emotional baggage that comes with it, and actually speak to them like human beings.
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: For me I would literally I mean not literally most of the time but I would leave the badge and the gun outside the interview room and go in as a human being.
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: You know and I've said this on some other of the shows and other podcasts but one of the things that when you go into that room with that person, if it's a victim that's telling you about being sexually abused or it's a witness that might not want to give you all the information, because maybe they're complicit in this act, maybe they have information, maybe the suspect is their spouse or their loved one, or their father or their mother or their best friend, and they don't want to give them up or rat on them.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: So you, you know there's a lot of things.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: You have to treat these different people, different roles, victims, suspects, witnesses with respect and like humans.
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: You know, and I would always say that the only difference between me and them, whoever I'm talking to, is that we have to talk about their role in life.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: Today, I get to keep mine in the closet With a suspect interview.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: I wasn't born with a badge on and, as a result, I've got skeletons in my closet, but I leave them there.
• 10:19
  Speaker 1: I don't get to expose them.
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: Today I don't have to expose them, but sitting down with that suspect, we have to talk about the skeletons in their closet.
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: We have to talk about the things that they believed were never going to resurface and we have to do it in such a way that we show dignity and respect to the human being.
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: At the end of the day, take the suspect out of it.
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: They're a human being, they're a child of God, just like me, and they deserved respect.
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I don't care what they've done.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's very hard, sometimes it's so hard I'm not the right person for the job, and some of my partners weren't the right persons for the job, based on certain cases, based on the way that it hit home.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: When you're in that room and you've found the ability to separate the person from whatever actions that they've taken or they've done, or you've read the person and realize that they're a little leery to give you information because they're in love with the person that was the offender or whatever it may be.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Once you're there, then my job was to befriend them.
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: My job was to break down those psychological walls and barriers and engage them in a conversation.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: And all the interview schools you go to in the world are great, but none of them are going to teach you how to talk to people and how to treat people like humans.
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: So you have to go in there and talk to them like a human, remove the psychological barrier, that's up.
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: You know I never put a table between me and the suspect.
• 12:41
  Speaker 1: I didn't sit across the table from my suspect.
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: There was nothing between us.
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: We would literally be face to face, our chairs squared off with each other, about 18 to 24 inches apart, looking in their eyes, me leaning on my lap, talking to him, sitting back, maybe taking some notes.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: But when you put that table between you and the suspect or between me and the suspect, that is a physical barrier.
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: It's a physical barrier and it's a psychological barrier.
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: I have to overcome that.
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: So I don't want it in my way.
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: They have spent so much time usually preparing themselves for not saying a word or not to admit anything in here or not to rat on anybody or not to tell, or they don't want to be there because they're embarrassed or whatever it may be.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: So oftentimes they will lie.
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: If they lie, they're putting up a psychological barrier.
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: They're literally building a wall of lies that they try to hide behind and it's my job to poke holes in those and to keep that wall down.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: So each time they put a brick up, it's my job to knock it down, and you can do that with respect, honor and dignity If you know how to communicate with people.
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: One of the things that I would use in interviews is food.
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: I would often feed my people, especially suspects.
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: You know the suspect is usually had a longer day by the time you get them there, at least in my world.
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: You got to remember I was doing homicide, child abuse stuff, and those things don't happen at two o'clock on a Tuesday.
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: Usually they're late nights, long hours, everybody's out running hard and we finally get the suspect in.
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: We finally find them on a traffic stop at three in the morning and we bring them in.
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: So they've had a long day.
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: I want to put some food in front of them.
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: When I put fruit in front of them, we're doing a couple of things.
• 14:24
  Speaker 1: First of all, we're breaking bread together.
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: We are one.
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: We're sharing in a meal.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: We're sharing in something intimate like that food.
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: It also allows me to judge whether or not they're in a position where they're going to talk to me, has something to withhold, doesn't want to share information, is scared, they're not going to have an appetite.
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: So if I set that food in front of them and they tell me how hungry they are, but they're not willing to touch the food or drink the drink, psychologically that can be a clue as to where they are versus the person that sits down and just gobbles it up.
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: Maybe they have something to hide and they're overly cocky.
• 15:06
  Speaker 1: Maybe they have nothing to hide or maybe they just have no remorse or no psychological effects based on whatever they've done.
• 15:12
  Speaker 1: It really depends on.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: You have to read each one individual because it depends on how much you know about their case and how much you know about how their involvement right.
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: So this is really like a psychological game from my side of the table and it was fun to play.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: It was more fun to play than the psychological game when you're going to buy a car and you're playing that thing.
• 15:34
  Speaker 1: You know, in this situation I'm befriending them, I'm building a trust, I'm building a rapport, I'm breaking bread I have.
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I'm just making sure that they trust me and they have to trust me as a human.
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: They have to understand that I'm just making sure that they trust me and they have to trust me as a human.
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: They have to understand that I'm not judging them for what they've done, where they've been, their lifestyle, the fact that they are a sex worker.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: I'm not judging them for any of that.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I just want to see them as a human.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: And it takes a little bit of time to build that rapport, but I think it is such a key piece of this process on how I can talk to them.
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Oftentimes some people with different schools of thought right, because we all have different schools of thought would judge me for spending the time that it took to build that rapport.
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: But at the end of the day, my interviews were more successful than theirs, and it's not because they were bad interviewers, it's because they went in with an agenda.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: They went in with a bias against the person and the person could read that and all of a sudden they don't want to open up, they don't want to talk about it.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: So you know, I think that your approach really determines the outcome in these interviews.
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: So once I'm in that room and I've broken down the walls, I've broken down the barriers, I've tested where they're at psychologically, either with food or friendship or stories or whatever it is.
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: Now it's time to start in to that actual interview, and I won't go into tons of details about that.
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: But you know you don't just come out and say, hey, did you murder so-and-so?
• 17:03
  Speaker 1: Right, you got to talk to them.
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: You have to build it up.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: You have to understand where they were.
• 17:10
  Speaker 1: I'm getting them to say some stuff that was either an admission or a provable lie, and a provable lie is just as important as a confession in a case.
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: If I can prove that you're lying to me, then there's a reason why, and that doesn't show well either in court or in a report or in front of a judge or a jury.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: So we have to understand what these provable lies are.
• 17:34
  Speaker 1: Once we have went through that and we've done the interview and we've got all of your information, we've got your alibi, whatever it may be.
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: I've shut you down a few times.
• 17:42
  Speaker 1: If you're a suspect uh, I've collected your information.
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: If you're a victim or a witness, you know.
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: Victim or witness, then it's, they're free to leave on the suspect side of the house, you know, then it's time for a confrontation.
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: Potentially, there's a lot of different ways to get into that interrogation portion of the interview in in talking about this.
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: That's how you do it.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: You separate yourself, you befriend them.
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: You don't have to be their friend, but you have to at least establish an open line of communication and you do that by not being judgy right off the bat.
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: You know, there was a case that I was involved in and the call comes in in the middle of the night that a girl has shown up at the hospital and she's covered in bruises from head to toe and the boyfriend says that they had been drinking.
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: She fell out of the bed and he put her back in bed and she never became conscious again.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: So that is the report.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Uh, when patrol gets to the hospital, they see that she's covered in bruises from head to toe.
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: By this time it's about four o'clock in the morning.
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: She gets transported to a trauma center in downtown Portland and that is where I go and meet with the family.
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: And when I get there, I've got the mom.
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: The mom is actually in with her daughter.
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: When I arrive, the dad, I've got the boyfriend, the sister, the brother, the whole family is there and I don't know what is going on.
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: So I just start interviewing people.
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: I interview the boyfriend and he gives me the same story.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, we were drinking, this is where we live.
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: She fell out of the bed, I picked her back up, I put her back in bed and that was it.
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: So I interview mom and dad.
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: Mom and dad says, yeah, there's been a little bit of domestic abuse in the past that we know of.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: She's reported and claimed it.
• 19:25
  Speaker 1: But they both drink a lot, they use drugs, blah, blah, blah, so it.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: But they both drink a lot, they use drugs, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: So that's kind of what I've got, you know.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: And then.
• 19:30
  Speaker 1: So I ended up hanging out with the boyfriend.
• 19:31
  Speaker 1: For most of the day we're at the hospital together.
• 19:33
  Speaker 1: We go downstairs to the cafeteria, we eat.
• 19:35
  Speaker 1: He's crying, he's sad, he's emotional.
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: His girlfriend is really sick and he doesn't know what's going to happen to her.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: He's in love with her.
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: We go back upstairs you know we're using the waiting room for the hospital and I'm like, dude, I said, can you just can we rearrange this furniture so you can show me what happened, so I can understand it.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: And he's like, yeah, no problem.
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: So we rearranged the furniture and to make it look like their bedroom, so all these chairs are, you know, in the shape of a bed and there's a dresser here and you know, so on and so forth.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: I'm like, well, and I'm videotaping all of this, I'm like, can you show me where you were at?
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: I was here.
• 20:10
  Speaker 1: Can you show me where she was?
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: She fell out of the bed here.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: She hit her head on this dresser.
• 20:14
  Speaker 1: I picked her up, I put her back into bed and that's what we got.
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: Once he's recreated the scene and shown me where everybody was positioned, you know, then we get done.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: We go grab some lunch.
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: By this time it's later in the day.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: We go grab some more food, he was hungry.
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I throw him in my police car.
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: I don't put him in the back, he's in the front seat with me.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: He's my buddy.
• 20:31
  Speaker 1: We're high-fiving, we're telling jokes where it's appropriate.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: We drive through a certain part of town.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: We talk about this restaurant that we both like.
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: We get back to the police department and in my mind there's been enough investigation going on behind the scenes.
• 20:44
  Speaker 1: We're investigating at the crime scene.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: We're looking at stuff.
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: There's signs of a struggle and a fight.
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: All the indicators are pointing that there is more to this kid's story than what he's telling me and that they might have got into a fight and who knows what occurred.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: So we get back to the police department and we sit down.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: I put him in the interview room.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: He's not handcuffed, he hasn't seen handcuffs, he doesn't even know he's a suspect.
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: I'm just going in for this witness interview is what he thinks.
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: Get the cameras turned on.
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: I go back to that interview room and I sit down in the chair and I'm talking to him and we're kind of recapping our day and I lean back in the chair and when I do I like lean back in this office chair, put my hands behind my head.
• 21:23
  Speaker 1: Well, the chair breaks and it falls backwards and I dropped like three inches and it scared the life out of me and it scared the life out of him and we both laughed and you know, and I'm like, oh man, it's just been a stressful day.
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: And then we go into this interview and I start talking to him about his night and I recap everything he tells me.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: I have him tell me again so I can check consistency in the story.
• 21:42
  Speaker 1: And as we go through it there's some inconsistent stuff.
• 21:45
  Speaker 1: So I start whittling away and chipping away at that.
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: But by this time he's my buddy, he's my friend and he trusts me.
• 21:51
  Speaker 1: We've got a relationship and we start going through this and, before you know it, I start, I'm able to chip away and I'm able to start accounting for some of these bruises.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: Well, I did grab her by the wrists, you know, because she was being angry earlier.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: So I grabbed her and shook her.
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: Okay, there's the bruises on the wrist.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: So we go through this whole process and at the end of the day he beat up his girlfriend.
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: He beat her to death and when she went unconscious he later in the bed and made up this story and drove her to the hospital or had mom to come and pick her up and drive her to the hospital and at the end of the day he he beat his girlfriend to death.
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: But he told me all of this.
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: And he didn't tell me all of this and this is a kind of a he's a little bit of a hardened gangster.
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: He didn't tell me all of this because he wanted to come out and confess it.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: He told me because there was a relationship built there and there was trust.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: And at the end of it he shook my hand and he's like dude.
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: He says you know, when I get out I want to look you up and I want to.
• 22:43
  Speaker 1: Maybe we can grab a cup of coffee or something and talk some more.
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: And I'm like dude, totally, we fist bump, I give him a hug, he goes in handcuffs and he goes off.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Now I know he's going to prison for the rest of his life, but that was that relationship.
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: How did I do that?
• 22:55
  Speaker 1: Broke down walls, broken on psychological barriers, fed him, shared some intimacy with him.
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: He trusted me, Trust led to that conversation and ultimately he admitted to everything.
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: There's another case that I actually profiled on this podcast, and it was the weight of Ashley's secret.
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: I believe it's episode number 22.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: And Ashley is a young lady who was a sex abuse victim at the hands of her father.
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: Her father raped her over a thousand times between the time she was two years old and the time she was about 20 years old.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: He got her pregnant at 16.
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: He took her and paid for the abortion.
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: Her father treated her as his girlfriend and finally Ashley had the courage and the strength to come forward and report this to me.
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: I investigated the case and ultimately her father was sentenced to, I believe, 18 years in prison, or 20 years in prison or something.
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: And that interview with that victim.
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: Talking about a victim interview, sometimes it's hard to identify yourself as a victim.
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: Sometimes it's hard to acknowledge that you don't have it all together or that bad things have happened to you.
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: Or sometimes there's some self-blame.
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: You feel like nobody's going to believe you.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: You feel like it's all for naught.
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: You feel like if I tell this, then my world is going to be destroyed.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: The world as I know it is going to change.
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: So do I want to come forward and be a victim?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: You know it's okay, I can just shove it down inside some more and never have to deal with it.
• 24:21
  Speaker 1: Well, ashley finally had the courage to come forward and one of the techniques that I used during that interview with Ashley was a pretext phone call where we actually called her father, who they were relatively estranged at the time and we called her father and she spoke to her father and you know her father confessed, without with some provocation, she had to get into some conversation, but you know she spoke to her dad about growing up and the time they spent together and how it wasn't right and how mom didn't know.
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: And she feels this weight and this burden on her.
• 24:55
  Speaker 1: You know, and the pregnancy and dad, were you ever?
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: Did you ever feel guilty for that?
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: And you know, is it?
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: Is it something you've ever told mom about?
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Was there anybody else?
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: Did you ever do this to my sister or my brother?
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: You know, dad, I just I want things to be right between us, but every time I'm around you I can't help but hold this burden.
• 25:15
  Speaker 1: You know what about that time?
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: You took me on my birthday to the seaside and you know that couple almost caught us having sex.
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: Were you scared?
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: I was terrified.
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: Dad says you, we go down this road and we get this pretext call and that is ammunition that I can have when I go to interview dad.
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: So now I go and find dad and I interview dad and I talk to dad and that's something I want to keep in my back pocket.
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: I don't want to let dad know that it's all prerecorded, because that might shut him down.
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: Remember, you have to play that psychological game.
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: So when I go sit down with dad and I talk to dad, I'm like dad, you know, this is what's being reported.
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: What can you tell me?
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: He's like ah, you know, I don't know what she's talking about.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: It's all, it's all lies.
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: She's lying.
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: Well, why would she lie?
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: Ah, because she was jealous of the relationship I had with my wife.
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: So we go down this, you know tale of crap.
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: And you shut down those lies because what are they?
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: They're psychological barriers, they're bricks in that psychological wall.
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: You shut down those things and, before you know it, because you're treating them like a human being and you're not treating them like a piece of crap, he starts to open up.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: Dad ultimately opened up and confessed and admitted to everything about the victim that we knew of.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: And then dad went one step further and told me about all the ways that he had violated and molested his second daughter.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: All of this because you're treating them like a human.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: So back to the caller's question how can you do this?
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: How can you interview these people?
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: Because you just treat them like humans.
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: And if you treat them like humans, usually there's a mutual respect there and they will talk back to you.
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that everybody will talk back and everybody's going to confess and be your best friend to you.
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: And I'm not saying that everybody will talk back and everybody's going to confess and be your best friend.
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: But what I will say is, out of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of interviews thousands maybe of interviews that I've conducted, there's only been pure evil two or three times in my career.
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: And anybody listening, who's been in my role, you'll understand pure evil when you see it.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: Even the guy that molested his daughter or his kids, that is not pure evil.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: That is somebody that's got crossed with the law.
• 27:12
  Speaker 1: They have an appetite for something that we don't understand because we don't have that same appetite.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: A split second decision changed their life when they killed somebody.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: But pure evil, you can see it, you can sense it.
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: The hair stand up on the back of your neck.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: You see it in their eyes.
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: That's only been a couple of times.
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: Other than that, human beings just want to be treated like human beings.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: When you have this rapport, oftentimes your people will give you more information.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: Just like dad confessed to everything about his other daughter because he felt safe and trusted in that environment and he's in custody.
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: During this interview, you know other people will also feed you information.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: We had a murder one morning about four o'clock in the morning.
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: We, ultimately two groups of kids, get into a fight.
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: One guy shoots and kills another kid.
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: That guy runs off into the night.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: About six, seven hours later we find that guy patrol.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Does they detain him, arrest him, bring him back to the office.
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: I ultimately interview him and during that interview he just wants to keep talking, talking, talking, talking over me.
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: He wants he's a gangster, he wants to run the conversation and that's not the way it's going to be.
• 28:20
  Speaker 1: So we can't let him run it, because the more we let him run it, that's the bigger foothold they have and the more they think they're in control and they're not.
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: So I had to shut down that useless conversation and he was, and I'm trying to talk over him and finally we get him to the crime scene and he, yeah, he admits being there and he admits running across the street.
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: Well, we know the guy that ran across the street on video is the one that pulled the trigger and killed this other person.
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: So he's sitting there and he keeps trying to talk over me, talk over me.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I'm like bro.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I said here's the deal.
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: Now I've treated him like a human up until this point.
• 28:53
  Speaker 1: I'm like, bro, here's the deal.
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: You keep talking.
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: I need you to listen.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: The next 30 seconds of this interview can determine the rest of your life.
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: Here's what I want you to do.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: You need to listen.
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: I want you to put your lips out in front of you.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: So he sticks his lips out, kind of like Donald duck.
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: I'm like grab your lips.
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: So he takes his fingers and he pinches his lips in front of him.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: I'm like now, don't let go, because that's the only way I'm going to get you to shut up.
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: So he sat there and this is hardened gangster, sitting in this interview room with his lips poked out, pinching them, so he won't talk and we go through it.
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: And after hearing it all out, he takes his fingers off his lips and he's like dude, yeah, I pulled the trigger, here's why blah, blah, blah.
• 29:34
  Speaker 1: And I said, well, I need to get that gun back.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: He's like, all right, let's go.
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: So we load him up in the car and he takes us.
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: And by this time it's the next day.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: He takes us around and he shows us exactly where he dumped the gun.
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: He shows us where he dumped the backpack, he shows us where he dumped the stuff that he stole.
• 29:48
  Speaker 1: He gave us all of this information and all of this evidence to build this case against him.
• 29:52
  Speaker 1: And now we take this to trial.
• 29:55
  Speaker 1: He gets sentenced to life in prison and before he goes off to jail he turns around and gives me a fist bump over the wall.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: And that you get that kind of response and respect because you treated them with respect.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: You treated them like a human.
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: That's how we do these interviews.
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: You know, I'm going to wrap this up in the in the interview world.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Whatever occurred did not occur to us.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: It's not our child, it's not us that are out there getting victimized by this person.
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: It just happens to be us that are put in the path to interview, collect evidence and help the victims of these cases.
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: So we should not take this personal.
• 30:35
  Speaker 1: This is not a personal attack on Aaron because somebody got killed in the streets or a child got molested.
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: It's my job, and God has put me where I am to ask the right questions, the right temperament, the right skill set to get to the bottom of it.
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: Allow the evidence to take us to where we need to be.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: Allow the evidence to show us the fruits and the facts of the case.
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: Take the evidence to take into court and allow the judge jury to determine if this person is guilty of said crime or not.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: How do we interview people and how can we do it?
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: Because, at the end of the day, we're all God's people.
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: We're all made in the image of God.
• 31:13
  Speaker 1: We all have skeletons in our closet.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: We all are worried about the things that affect us every day how we're getting our kids to school, how we're paying the bills too many bills, not enough money what we're going to have for dinner.
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: What are our parents going to think.
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: These are all concerns and thoughts that every single person has when they find themselves in a hot seat or in a situation in life.
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: And to recognize that this person has the same issues that you have and to get them to recognize that you are a human being just like them.
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden, they don't see a badge.
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden, they don't see a gun.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: All of a sudden, they don't see an adversary.
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: They see somebody that they want to open up and talk to.
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And you've laid and made that foundation for them and you've given them a safe place to come out and share.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: And I've interviewed some hardened criminals and it is what it is and this is the way that it worked for me.
• 32:02
  Speaker 1: This is my method that worked.
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: This is my toolbox of tools that worked for me for a long time.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: I'm not the best.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: There's things that I'm not good at.
• 32:10
  Speaker 1: I'm not good at buying dope.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: I'm not good best.
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: There's things that I'm not good at.
• 32:14
  Speaker 1: I'm not good at buying dope.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: I'm not good at trying to shuck and jive on the street.
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: I'm not good at a lot of things.
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: Interviewing was something I really enjoyed.
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: I enjoyed that psychological game and it was a lot of fun.
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: So to the caller out there who asked the question, there's your answer.
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much for asking.
• 32:28
  Speaker 1: Thank you for being a part of the conversation.
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: You guys can always reach out to me on Instagram.
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: Murders to Music.
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: You can email me at murders2music at gmailcom and I'll answer your questions.
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: I'll make these episodes just for you.
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: Please reach out, let me know what you want to know and I'm happy to help.
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: Ladies and gentlemen, that is a Murders to Music podcast.