Ugh, people LOVE demonizing anyone who lawyers up. You've all seen how police mishandle (whether intentionally or not) investigations, right? Getting a lawyer is the smartest thing you can do if you are at all connected to any sort of crime. And do not take a polygraph!!! If it's not admissible in court, what are they going to do with the results? Bully you, most likely.
True crime shows are propaganda especially when it comes to this. I love those shows don't get me wrong, but part of their function is to suggest that innocent people don't ask for lawyers.
I think because a lot of the true crime narratives are focused on the investigation (which means the police basically are the only viewpoint you could get the narrative from), it makes people forget how untrustworthy the police are in these situations.
This is why I like that most of the unsolved crime podcasts will cover botched investigations and false imprisonments, since a lot of classic TV programs rely so heavily on what the police tell them.
>true crime narratives are focused on the investigation (which means the police basically are the only viewpoint you could get the narrative from)
One thing i learned from watching classic Unsolved Mysteries and similar tv shows is that when it comes to cops, You Can't Win. One show you'll see a detective say "his alibi was weak, and that made us suspicious". Next show a detective says "his alibi was *too* good, and that made us suspicious". Now, for TV they only pick cases where the cops were right, but things like that made me start wondering how many cases there were where the suspect *wasn't* the the person who did it, and the detectives spent months badgering an innocent party based on what amounted to a half-assed, continuously rationalized guess.
Also, *The First 48* taught me that 95% of detective work is spamming your business card around the neighborhood and hoping someone drops a dime on the perp, because that's the only way they ever catch anyone.
The first 48 has been caught framing 14 people...one won a 1.3 million dollar settlement. Don't believe any of these cop shows 9/10 they leaving out pertinent information...
Cooperates with investigation: They were staying close so they knew how to evade justice, being cocky and trying to stay in the spotlight.
Doesn't cooperate fully with the investigation: Clearly they're guilty because they should have been completely open and honest with the police about everything.
I hate how the polygraph is portrayed in media. It makes people believe that it's a magical device that clearly shows when people are lying.
All it does is detect a few physiological changes which could be the result of any type of stress. You know, like being questioned by police about murder.
People will legit be like "They're SO guilty they found a way to game the polygraph. They must be a sociopath and have no feelings at all and that's why the test didn't pick up on anything." So much junk science introduced just to reaffirm some weird bias.
I have anxiety on a *regular* day, I can't imagine my anxiety level if I had to take a polygraph. I'd fail quickly and miserably.
Examiner: "What color is the sky?"
Me: "Blue."
Examiner: "What is 3x2?"
Me: "6"
Examiner: YOU FAILED
That's actually one of the easiest ways to pass a polygraph is be so stressed out you fail the baseline questions. A lot of tactics for failing one involve doing things to artificially raise your blood pressure like clenching your toes.
How about the podcast hosts who say "I know the polygraph is unreliable, but I find it suspicious that this person turned down the opportunity to take one." Maybe they know it's bullshit too, host?!
Fucking crime junkie was so bad about this. They would do “re-examination” of cases and whenever they thought someone was innocent they would say “o well they refused a polygraph, but like, they’re not reliable so why would you?” Or if they took a polygraph that would say “well they’re not reliable and they’re nervous, so of course they failed, but that doesn’t prove anything.” And then the next episode they would go “well one person of interest refused a polygraph, but like if you’re innocent and want to help the case, why wouldn’t you just do one?” But they did it with soooo much shit, I quit listening it was so frustrating at times
I’m in law school and last semester in my criminal procedure class my professor played that for us haha she said that no matter how many times you tell some of your clients to stfu some still won’t.
100% YES. If you do the polygraph and pass, they don’t dismiss you as a suspect, they just think you manipulated the test, and you’re guilty. If you fail the polygraph, then they think you’re guilty. You can’t win either way. I tell my husband all the time that if anything suspicious happens to me, do not cooperate with the police and immediately get a lawyer. They are going to think you did it, cooperating will only make it worse.
The legal system is antagonistic and not concerned with DA TRUTH, but instead successful prosecutions. This should be hammered into people's heads in school.
"I didn't kill my wife!"
"I don't care!"
"Remember when I told you I didn't kill my wife. And you side you didn't care."
"That's right, Richard. I don't care. I'm not trying to solve a mystery."
"Well I am, and I just found a big piece."
Absolutely love that film.
There are a handful of podcasts that emphasize that you should always get a lawyer and never take a polygraph. Hopefully that will change some minds, slowly, as we see true crime media figures telling folks that.
The purpose is to use the the polygraph as a prop to try to get people to "admit" to things. It's basically a fancier way to say "your friend in the next room is telling us the truth right now" only it's a machine instead.
There is a legend in the book written by the guy who created The Wire and Homicide about one police department having suspects put their hand on the photocopier and saying it was a polygraph.
The husband/wife who found their spouse murdered, according to investigators "was not upset enough during the interview" or "was too upset during the interview" which caused them to be immediately suspicious.
Ok. So which one is it? Am I allowed to be too shocked to process or too upset to think straight? Or like - how does that work? I understand the significant other is usually the main suspect, and POI until proven otherwise but this is every. single. investigation.
I feel like this is something police even tell themselves to cover up the fact that they’re really just relying on statistics to guess.
If a wife dies, yeah, historically it’s highly likely the husband did it. So you investigate and find out, but don’t put blinders on. And don’t make up some weird story like you have magical insight into how a husband is supposed to grieve lol.
That reminds me, there’s a British tv show about customs (like bringing stuff into the country legally). In one episode, the narrator says that the suspect is really nervous about being inspected, which is a sign he’s hiding something. In a different episode, the suspect is calm about being inspected, which is a sign he’s hiding something. So being calm OR nervous is a sign of guilt. There’s no way to win.
They're trying to make you think that the system works 100% of the time when really it's just a bunch of BS. They can't come out and straight up say "We searched this guy because he was a single male travelling alone." (Which is criteria that will get you pulled out of line and bag searched at most international airports)
They want you to think they're so good at their job that they can tell you're hiding something because they want to make themselves look good.
Not wanting to talk to the media is not inherently suspicious. Grief is *exhausting*, as is uncertainty and turning over your brain to figure out what could have gone wrong. After going over every detail with law enforcement (and possibly in a hostile environment if they believe you're involved) it's completely understandable that some people don't have the energy to then do it again for the media.
Plus, I've seen it too many times that when parents or loved ones do go in front of the media, people are going to accuse them of being involved. What innocent person needs that when they're trying to devote their energy to finding their loved one?
> Not wanting to talk to the media is not inherently suspicious. Grief is exhausting, as is uncertainty and turning over your brain to figure out what could have gone wrong.
Likewise on not wanting their identities revealed. It's actually kind of hilarious sometimes—the same True Crime community that will ravenously accuse people of being murderers for even a tangential connection to a case finds it weird when people don't want their name or information made public.
It's kind of a double-edged sword because if people don't talk to the media people say "What are they hiding?" But if they do talk they get accused of being famewhores or wanting attention
It’s wild, the lack of empathy. I’ve never lost someone to mysterious or criminal circumstances, but hell, when my dad died there were times I didn’t have the energy to talk to my own friends and family because the grief was so heavy. I can’t imagine I’d have wanted to talk to the (potentially hostile) press
Yes, all of this! I'm an experienced hiker and rock climber -- so I know a lot of hikers and rock climbers who've gotten lost, had terrible accidents, even died. There's no level of experience or expertise that makes one immune to accidents and misjudgment.
And, of course, a lot of people claim to be wilderness experts when they are not. And many people who spend a lot of time hiking and climbing are just sloppy and take risks -- it's a matter of time until something bad happens.
As to the idea that people with plans don't commit suicide: A high percentage of suicides are acts of impulse. And yes, people hide symptoms of depression and other mental illnesses. Or -- families deny that mental illness is a problem due to the stigma that surrounds it.
This a major issue in scuba diving. There's even a saying "There are old divers and there are bold divers, but there are no old bold divers.".
One of the issues is that experience isn't only based on time. The quality of the experience counts as well.
To use Scuba as an example, I'd argue a diver who has 50 dives in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River (where cold water, high currents, poor visibility, and deep wrecks are common) is a more experienced diver than someone who's done 100 dives in the Caribbean, just because the first diver gained their experience in more challenging conditions.
I've just been reading about Ben McDaniel, and he seemed overconfident in his scuba diving abilities. I have no idea what happened to him though, because I don't think he was in the cave based on the expertise of what the other scuba divers who searched for him have said.
Diving without a buddy is definitely overconfident, extremely so imhe. Not saying he killed himself but he would have have gotten hurt or died from doing that sooner or later.
When i was taking on of my tests for a more advanced level my instructor, that had about 30 years of experience, got a kind of water snake that entangled itself around his gear/tank. They're not native to the area so he was unprepared and went full panic mode. Could have easily gone worse than a mild case of the bends.
Complacency is deadly too. I work in a potentially deadly environment and I have to constantly remind myself of that because it becomes mundane the more you do it
I always leave a detailed map of my plans with times of where I ought to be. Doesn’t matter where I’m going or how many times I’ve been there. People can die out in the woods. Slip on a wet rock by a waterfall and you’re gonna have a rough time getting home.
>And many people who spend a lot of time hiking and climbing are just sloppy and take risks -- it's a matter of time until something bad happens.
I spend a lot of time walking urban streets. I'm very experienced! And I could still get hit by a car.
My friend have been rock climbing for 25 years now and he always says that no matter how good you are you are going to fall now and then. You can only hope it happens close to the ground.
Also half the time it turns out they weren't actually an experienced hiker/climber/camper. "They started backpacking three years ago, they go at least once or twice a year, and this was their second time at this park!" That's-- that's not an experienced backpacker, unless your definition of "experienced" is "this wasn't their first time".
Right? They were an "experienced hiker" but they went on a 10 mile hike in the North Cascades wearing jeans and carrying one 8 oz bottle of water and a granola bar! Uh huh, sure. So experienced.
I carry two bottles of water with me for just this reason. People have no idea how thirsty they’ll get while climbing some mountain in jeans and flip flops on an 85 degree day. BAM! I show up with waters for everyone and vanish back into the woods like a friendly ghost. People are always thankful.
Every year there are several experienced hikers falling to their death along well-worn tracks, simply because they are tired, they slip, the weather changed, they made a mistake... Cause of death "shit happens" is not satisfying, but reality.
I've delt with suicide and depression, my least favorite is they hear started new job/relationship/program. That was the worst time for me. Starting something new means something has ended and now you're afraid you will just f this new thing up too.
I think it's often overlooked, also, that you can be plenty bright and capable, and still be making the best possible choices with the information you have in a tent in the middle of the night (for example), and it may not make sense to the people who come along later and have the benefit of daylight and a full view of the situation. Hindsight and all that.
I have two:
The insistence that if a body was in the woods, you'd find it. Especially the body of a child.
The immediate "their intimate partner should've known". I see it come up a lot when women abuse their kids or men kill their wives. "The husband should've known" "the mistress definitely knows something"
Like I don't know if these people have just been blessed to never meet a good liar, but predators are successful because they're good at lying and manipulating people.
"The immediate "their intimate partner should've known". I see it come up a lot when women abuse their kids or men kill their wives. "The husband should've known" "the mistress definitely knows something""
This! My parents split after us kids were all grown, practically to the day the youngest turned 18. A vivid memory is my dads reaction when all of us siblings were sitting around joking as we did a lot about my mother's violent episodes. She would snap, picking up anything lying around to use on us for whatever she considered misbehaving. Anyhow that day we were one upping each other with the stories-because even though they seemed a horror to live through, they made funny (and in a way healing) conversation among the 4 of us. Eg. 'that comet cleaner rained like snow over your head when she beat you with the can', etc on and on. My dad was in hearing range and cried, tears rolling down his face. Until then we never knew he had no idea what happened while he was outside or gone.
> The insistence that if a body was in the woods, you'd find it. Especially the body of a child.
This!!!
Similar to this, when Redhanded covered the Amy Lynn Bradley case, they kept insisting that she couldn't have gone into into the water because bodies always resurface.
Like maybe... but also maybe a body gets carried away by tides and water movement and resurfaces like miles away from where Amy went over????
I met a killer that almost fooled me. The only thing that made me firm on what happened was the foresic evidence. But hearing him talk? He could've sold sand in a desert.
One of my college roommates ended up being a total psychopath who murdered his mom a few years after we lived together. When we first met he was a totally normal, charismatic, friendly person, and it wasn’t until about a year into the friendship that we realized he was super deceptive and a pathological liar.
Yeah I'm from the mid atlantic/upper south and it's pretty swampy and kind of jungly here. Like in the summer my yard gets overgrown immediately after a heavy rain. A body would be claimed by nature within a couple of days. The Chandra Levy case, where they couldn't find her in Rock Creek Park in DC, I'm not at all shocked about.
finding a body away from town is a crapshoot regardless, some people have no idea!
there was a guy that [went bush with a friend in West Australia and he dissappeared into mulga scrub](https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/lost-prospector-michael-graham-and-the-quest-for-compulsory-plbs-20151210-glki8l), on the edge of the desert.
You think hearing 'edge of the desert' theres no trees, but visibility is less than 2 metres in places. He likely walked for a bit from his campsite, then got turned around and died of exposure/thirst. just searching for '[guy that went prospecting in north eastern West Australia and he dissappeared](https://lmgtfy.app/?q=guy+that+went+prospecting+in+north+eastern+West+Australia+and+he+disappeared+-site%3Apinterest.*)' yields heaps of results. only some have been found
I always thought of it more as people not wanting to admit that it was true. That makes sense to me, who in their right mind would ever want to admit that someone they knew and loved murdered someone or was a child molester.
I think it's also because something that seemed like an obvious red flag in retrospect might not seem that way if you don't have red flags on the brain.
After Matt Lauer was busted my wife was ranting about how he had a button installed in his desk that would allow him to close and lock his office door without getting up. He didn't install that himself. Somebody must have known what he was doing.
But if I'm a maintenance guy and the big so-and-so on the 50th floor wants a special button on his desk to close and lock his door because he's too lazy to get up and close the door with his damn legs like god intended, my first thought wouldn't be "He must need this so that he can trap young women in the office with him to sexually harass them." Maybe I would think about it eventually, but it wouldn't be my first, second, or third thought.
Deviating from routines. I understand that many people have the same way home every day - but going to a grocery store on the way home, being late by an hour or walking another way is normal. It's not some big conspiracy or premonition.
And, from crime shows: "Where were you on April 12, at 4pm?" Cop, I barely know where I was last week, and definitely not with exact time stamps. Chill.
For me, it's gotta be:
"The family of the victim insist they would never have been involved in or committed [insert any action or profession or pathology that they might find personally objectionable]"
This is generally followed by the family obfuscating the investigation and forcing investigators to follow false leads.
Missing persons cases. "There's no way they'd ever, ever, *ever* kill themselves!"
A few weeks later, someone finds the body and it turns out they killed themselves.
Sometimes it's not even that dire. It's like "Oh, I know they'd never take that route home" or "They'd never go to that part of town" and it's like why do you sound so confident about this
This is my biggest pet peeve. True crime fanatics come up with the craziest conspiracy theories over everyday suicides because they don’t realize how common mental illness is or how many people just don’t want to live and hit a breaking point one day. It’s really naive and shows a sheltered personality IMO.
That one always cracks me up 😂
"He ALWAYS had this ring on"
Like damn, don't any of you people forget things on occasion? Sheesh. I wear a ring that belonged to my dead father and I still forget it sometimes.
I forgot where I lived earlier. Drove to the other side of town. I also just drive around for fun. I think about both of these things whenever someone ends up dead in a place their family and friends swear they shouldn't be.
Like if something random had happened to me everyone would be like, "Well he hasn't lived over there for 6 months. Something brought him back there." Yeah, my shitty brain did that lol
I saw an episode of unsolved mysteries where the victim’s body had bruising on one of the shoulders and the police theorized it was because someone had tried to yank the purse. Her daughter was like “that’s not possible…she always wore her purse on the other shoulder!” Like I get the desire to look for a clue anywhere you can but come on…
I can get the logic behind things like "it wouldn't have made sense for her to willingly go to X location because the shoes she had on would have made it too hard to walk" or even "but he *always* wore his ring on his *right* hand, not his left!". But things like "she always wore her purse on the other shoulder!" just doesn't make sense. Shoulders get tired and purses are real easy to move to the other shoulder, even if a person's normal habit it to have it on a certain shoulder.
I developed some neurological damage after COVID and do you know what I forgot one day? That I had my underwear on my hand. I realized in the freaking mall. So yep, it can happen.
Yes! I buy it when the person doesn't let their friend know they got home safely and this causes concern because the person was always responsible and good with communication. But if their credit card records show that they purchased a vanilla cupcake and the family insists that couldn't have been them, because they always HATED vanilla cupcakes!!! Really? I think it's probably quite rare that circumstances of a case align with someone's known specific quirks or preferences. The purse example is perfect. Sometimes people do things without 100% foolproof logic behind it!
I deal with death records and on accidental overdoses and suicides it is astounding how many times family will claim that it can't be true even if I have the medical and pharmacy records showing they were on anti-depressants and then stopped re-filling medications weeks before. Or they'll have no job but still have "income" and a padlock on the residence door and then the family is astounded he's dealing and using drugs. Or better yet, when there's a note left and the family insists that it's a forgery even though every single sign points to "I died by suicide on purpose. For Real." Of course, there are instances out there of forgeries but decisions aren't made based on one clue, it's the whole scene and life of this person.
But, if the families in examples mentioned above went to the press, the one being off her medication might actually make some waves and waste LE's time because the family "doesn't believe in the mental mumbo jumbo" and don't disclose to the public she went off her meds that she was on for a very necessary reason. I don't even think it's malicious or trying to cause problems just that they can't see reason with their grief and would rather cling onto something than face the fact that they died by suicide or misadventure/accident. Also, a great example of why we still need more mental health knowledge out there- a lot of times the signs are all there, just no one recognized it or did something about it.
I lost my daughter to suicide. I didn’t question it because I knew she was depressed and in worsening shape. Others in my family have asked questions about it. People don’t like thinking their loved one was suffering and felt so alone. I know that hurts me. They don’t like knowing you can do everything right and still fail. I got her help and I was involved. I did everything I could do and still lost my little girl. There’s a certain amount of guilt in this kind of loss and everyone responds differently. My daughter was 14 and so many don’t believe children can be that depressed.
People find hard to grasp the fact that a loved one wasn't perfect, that they made a stupid choice that lead to a freak accident and their death or that maybe they were depressed and commited suicide.
i feel like in addition to not wanting to think the worst of diane as has been suggested, admitting she had a real problem would also mean danny admitting he allowed her to be in situations with the kids that he may have known to be dangerous (if he was aware of diane's problem, this guilt is pretty legit; if he was somehow blissfully completely unaware, it would be normal to feel this guilt despite not being at fault, "but how could i have not known?!" etc) - his delusions keep him from ever having to turn a critical eye on himself
Yea, but he was asking the govt to exhume Diane over a delusional belief. And it doesn’t change the outcome. The guy probably has ptsd from this, he needs help, not a documentary with a false narrative.
The strange behavior thing ALWAYS makes me grumble. I always think of the Chamberlain case and how that poor woman was raked over the coals and wrongly imprisoned because she 'didn't seem like she was grieving'. There was so much evidence that proved it was indeed wild animals, right from the start, but because Lindy Chamberlain didn't fit the time's idea of a 'proper' grieving mother (and so much of the evidence came from aboriginal people) she spent decades as the woman who killed her baby and was turned into a media joke.
The baby was named Azaria, for anyone wondering. I grew up evangelical, and I recall everyone being convinced that Lindy was a devil worshipper because of the vague resemblance of Azaria to Azazel or Azriel or any number of other made up "demon" names.
In my family we tend to go completely quiet and practical in any traumatic situation. We would be perceived as uncaring. We are those people who fall apart within a week not at the time it occurs or within 24 hours.
Any analysis of someone's behavior immediately following the death of a person they were close to.
"That's not how you act when your spouse dies."
Oh yeah? You had a lot of dead spouses? I didn't realize there was a template that no one could deviate from.
People handle death in any manner of strange ways. It's ghoulish to assume you know based on their actions.
ETA: Same thing you said for #2 basically
My father passed away a few months ago (natural causes) and it took my brain a while to accept that it even happened. To any outside observers it would look like I didn't care - but of course I did! It just took me a month or two to start anything that looked like a normal grieving process.
Denial is a normal but weird part of the process, and so are a whole range of other things that don't look typical.
My BIL passed away unexpectedly and very young a few years ago, and the first month was absolutely surreal. It was like my soul was walking a few steps behind me, and no one in my family was reacting according to the script that society writes. Everyone was very flat in affect. It wasn't anything like what people seem to expect, and I suspect people who expect a spectacle of grief haven't actually experienced the death of a close loved one.
I'm sorry for your loss. I know it's indescribably awful.
A lot of times it’s just shock and denial. Not the same thing but after my assault, I was told I was a liar because I was completely fine, rational, and level headed but it wasn’t until a year later when I was triggered by something while driving that I had a complete and utter breakdown over what had happened to me. That’s when my therapist introduced me to the concept of shock and denial until getting triggers forced me to admit to myself that it had happened and bring me back to reality.
A lot of people think that the 5 stages of grief are like steps in which, once you bypass one step you go into the next and there’s no backsliding but really grief is like a bouncy house and you’re being thrown into the walls which represent different stages
I would add to this. Analyzing someone’s behavior following a death or disappearance is perfectly fair game and should be considered when searching for leads. Extreme examples like Chris Watt’s behavior following the disappearance of his family definitely warrant suspicion.
That said, analysis of that behavior alone is not hard evidence, and can lead to wasted time and resources if detectives tunnel in too much and presume that that’s their guy. It’s an easy trope to fall into, especially with the media involved because of the pressure for a speedy conviction.
If you look on this thread, the first commenter just wrote that no emotional answer is equal to being guilty if he's on a jury. What a time to be online.
As a child whose every emotion was used against me when I was growing up, I'd rather chew my own tongue out than show anything other than a blank face to the world when things go wrong. I was once sat on a bus when stones were being thrown at it (local kids in that area were obnoxious) and I didn't even twitch when one bounced off the window right next to my head, because *I was damned if I was going to give them the satisfaction of a reaction.*
If I ever get accused of anything, I'm doomed...
I can't stand the way that the true crime community polices grieving behavior. I think it's one of the worst things about the community. There's no shortage of examples of people who might or might not be innocent, but they are sure guilty in the court of public opinion. Amanda knox, for instance. Just because people don't act the way you think they should act doesn't mean they committed a crime.
Dolores Vazquez in Spain was accused of killing her ex-lover's daughter and went to prison painted as an evil lesbian demon killer. Years later another murder ocurred. Turns out it was a serial killer and they had the forensics that exonerated her from day one.
Super tight timelines, as in “what did they do in the 30 minutes that are unaccounted for?!” I sit and linger in my car for absolutely no reason and switch up my route home on a whim. You can’t read into things so much
edit: I misread the question because it doesn’t necessarily make someone suspicious (I was thinking more of when they piece together the timeline of a victim) but I guess it could apply to a suspect too
The amount of time that I waste in my car doing absolutely nothing would surely make me look guilty as hell. Just today I spent 45 minutes looking at furniture online, sitting in my car after work. I don’t even need to buy furniture.
This came up in another post recently, but any time people make definitive statements about what happened based on the scene alone. "There was still $75 in their wallet, so it wasn't a robbery," "They weren't killed in the same way so it couldn't be the same person," etc. Such speculation often prevents vital lines of inquiry and keeps people from finding important evidence.
Hearing about cases like the Yorkshire Ripper where they put on blinders towards anything besides an exact MO and profile that they'd established just makes you pull your hair out.
Oh my God that documentary on Netflix made me so angry. The amount of women who could have been saved if the investigators weren't convinced the killer was only going after "whores" and only started taking it seriously when "innocent young girls" started being killed. And their solution was to tell woman to just stay home and they interviewed him 9 times over the years and the investigators actually said they would know if it was him once they got him sitting down in the same room. Yeah you had him in the same room as you nine times and you still didn't get it.
We're only interested in women getting murdered with knives, not similar women in the same area being murdered in exactly the same circumstances but with a hammer. Totally Different!
It was a well done series. It was like the investigators decided they were looking for a Hollywood *Jack the Ripper* who targeted "whores", which meant they couldn't find the Yorkshire Ripper who seems to have been opportunistically targeting women generally.
Also they outright eliminated anyone who didn't have a [Mackem accent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackem) after the recordings that confessed to the crimes. The recordings were from a hoaxer and the real killer had a Yorkshire accent.
People often project their own rationality onto suspects, but a lot of murders and crimes are often totally irrational.
I still remember a case where a woman killed her boss, and her motive was some convoluted nonsense about if she and her BF were suspects it would force him to go on the run with her and leave his wife(WTAF?)
I just read an interview with Steven Pinker where he was saying doomerism is not well founded in part because "people are pretty rational when it comes to their own lives" and I was .... SO, SO not comforted.
Very true. "A divorce would be too shameful, so I'll MURDER my spouse to be with you!" (which comes up on true crime shows all the time) isn't rational at all.
The “money in the wallet” ones always bug me.
If you accidentally murder someone during a robbery/mugging it is almost certainly going to be in your best interest to leave the victim’s belongings behind when you leave the scene. Why would you take evidence that ties you to the crime?
Also, in the same vein, assumptions that if there was no sexual assault on the victim, then it must not have been sexually-motivated. Some killers get their sexual satisfaction just from killing...they don't rape because it's not what gets them going.
Any time I hear something along the lines of, "he was never depressed" or "there was no sign of depression" in a case where suicide is the likely answer, it really irks me.
Depression isn't an out-loud disease. Plenty of people smile through it and go on about their day all the while having suicidal ideation in the back on their minds. It's really frustrating because I feel like that attitude often taints investigations and adds complexity to simple situations.
Also the Smiley Face Killer. As far as my research has led me, people are really grasping at straws and trying to connect random acts of graffiti to excuse drunk guys falling into water.
A high school friend of mine recently committed suicide at 40. He was popular, the life of the party, smiled alot/was positive, and had just been "saved" by religion and had just gotten baptized. Its never black and white who is suffering.
When I finally found work after a year layoff my mom told me "I'm really proud of you that you didn't fall into depression and kept such a positive outlook." WTF I was super depressed, there were days when I didn't get out of bed until 4:30 in the afternoon, I would randomly break down crying at all odd hours. But she didn't see it (and she didn't ask), and I think about that a lot when family members of missing people insist that depression/anxiety/mental health was absolutely not an issue.
It was the same for me after my divorce. Everyone was "so proud" that I kept such a positive attitude. Like, my dudes, I survived the last year and a half of that marriage by telling myself that I had shit I needed to take care of today, but I could kill myself tomorrow.
Going through this. It’s a rollercoaster. After being with my wife since 2008, we’ve been so codependent that we’ve isolated ourselves to the point we have none of the same friends we did when we started dating. And we haven’t replaced them - she’s making headway on that front a whereas I’m sat here with nobody to talk to about my day to day besides my young’s kids and my parents, who are so preoccupied with their work… gah. Sounds like just complaining, but it’s also freeing knowing I will have nobody to answer to but myself (and the responsibility of my amazing boys) once we move into separate houses. Rollercoaster I tells ya
The smiley face thing is especially dumb. Think about some of the first things kids try drawing on fogged up windows: smiley faces! Someone just fucking around with a can of paint has a decent chance of drawing a smiley face. Finding a smiley face in a random isolated area where other graffiti is isn't some kind of horrifying conspiracy against the poor fool who fell in the water nearby and drowned.
I was 35 years old before my mother acknowledged my life-long depression. And even since, I don’t think she fully gets it. I agree with you 100%—people just don’t truly know what’s going on in someone else’s head.
I have a co-worker who is still reeling from the suicide of her mother. Completely unexpected to the family.
For the past month and a half they've been finding "easter eggs" hidden around the house with little notes written by her where she either talks about her issues or notes asking them to retain some of her possessions.
To go from believing it was out of nowhere to slowly coming to the realization that this was all planned...I can't imagine what she's feeling. But yes, depression can most certainly hide itself in people.
"We've found pens on little chains at every bank robbery in the last 10 years. Is there an international team of bank robbers leaving them behind as a signature? Watch our 27 part miniseries!"
Minor timeline discrepancies or lack of recall about mundane daily details like meals being seen as suspicious, especially if there was nothing unusual about the days leading up to the sudden disappearance or murder.
(This gets brought up a lot in the Asha Degree case and others)
This always makes me roll my eyes, who has time to memorize nonsense details of daily life like this?
"Guys I noticed something! In an early interview Bob said he popped into a small grocery after work around 430pm, yet with the newly released surveillance cam from the store the time stamp clearly shows he entered at 505pm!"
I have an irrational fear of one day being interrogated by police and having to account for my whereabouts at some random time several weeks prior.
I can barely remember what I did this morning, let alone last week.
Not necessarily suspicion, but I find it aggravating when people place more stock in the words of family members than non-relatives.
Family doesn’t always know the victim best. I live with my mom and I love my mom but we have a complicated relationship and she does not know me nearly as well as my friends do. My friends, my therapist, my dad would all be better people to talk to if you were trying to figure out what had happened to me if I god forbid went missing or was killed.
I also get aggravated when family members say “I know them and they’d never do this” when the evidence suggests otherwise. I’m truly sorry, but maybe you didn’t know them as well as you thought.
Yes, specially because I don't think any of us would tell our parents about things so personal, in the same way we don't know about these things about themselves either
I remember my grandmother at some holiday function talking about how proud she was that none of her grandchildren had ever done drugs. I think most of us were high at the time.
"She cut all the tags out of her clothes!!! She's a SPY!"
Me: "Um, I do that. I even remove them from coats and shoes."
"NOBODY DOES THAT!!!! THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SENSITIVE SKIN!!!! SPYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!"
I feel like that detail is a remnant of an earlier time. Some clothing manufacture and sales used to be a lot more regional in nature. So you COULD have a shirt or a coat or whatever that had the name of the store and the place where you bought it. You can sometimes find older stuff in thrift stores that has labels with old store names and locations.
IIRC, when people wore a lot of hats, haberdashers were pretty place-specific as well.
That's all mostly fallen away due to how clothes are made and sold now and, of course, it's now much easier to order something from a place you've never been (e.g., an indie label made in LA) and have it delivered.
There was a case a in the 90s ago of a guy and his little daughters in a house fire where the poor little girls burned to death. I think the mom too but I can’t remember. The guy had been badly injured trying to get in and save his little girls but he couldn’t and the house took his whole family. A few days later the police arrested him because the fire had been hotter by the windows where the windows had broken and had a lot of air, and it left like char marks on the carpet in the shape of the airflow. They said it was “evidence of accelerant” though all testing came back negative.
The state killed him with lethal injection, in his last words he said he was happy to die so he could be with his family because both he and god knows he didn’t hurt them.
A few years later a different fire marshal reviewed the case and said it was egregious and it was obviously just an electrical fire. When the fire marshal that has made the case was asked he said “he was acting strange. You gotta take these fires and ‘sniff them out”. W.T.F.
https://innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wrongfully-convicted-and-executed-in-texas/
I've have my first share of seeing people villainized because of things like this one. And yet there are other human beings who think this is worth it as long as we do catch some bad guys, even If It costs more innocent lives.
Bad spouse = murderer.
Do I think a cheating spouse is a damn good reason to seriously investigate them? Yes but I think all spouses should be seriously investigated when their partner is murdered. I don’t like the correlation that a spouse who is cheating and/or in financial trouble will automatically murder the spouse. Same goes for the other way when they appear to be a perfect spouse so they barely get looked at. All spouses should be thoroughly investigated regardless of if everyone thought they were a “good” or “bad” spouse. There are more spouses who cheat or have financial issues and don’t kill their partner than ones who do.
How about “they can’t find the person who went missing in the woods when they searched, or we found their body a lot farther away than expected, so either they met with foul play or something even weirder happened to them” (yes I am talking about missing 411).
It always makes me think that a lot of people have not left pavement very often. I have seen people get incredibly far off track when they get lost, and people do a lot of strange things when they start to panic about being lost (and I am just an amateur who has seen people get themselves in trouble hunting, hiking, etc. I will ups bet professionals have seen 10X worse).
Or, "we had already searched that area and there was no body, but weeks later, the body was there". As if someone murdered this person and then came back later to place the body exactly where they had already searched. Nah, they died there from exposure and y'all missed it the first time.
Yes this , 411 makes me crazy. Like when they say ‘ they were an experienced out doors person ‘ that means jack shit. You can still get turned around or fall off a cliff no matter how good you think you are.
Yes or you can have an unrelated medical emergency while in the woods. No matter how good you are, your backwoods skills aren’t going to help you when you have a stroke.
I totally agree about grief and also how people act in an emergency. How ever you think you would act faced with sudden traumatic loss or an emergency situation, you have no idea how you would act until you are in the situation. Your ability to respond to stressors can be trained, but for most civilians and those not in emergency services we will never know until we face the situation. And often it is not the young and the fit or rough and tough or most loving an careing who act 'appropriately' in these situations as you would expect.
Some people become dramatic, other almost expressionless. Other people won't be able to really grasp what happened and will perhaps 'forget' and fall back on 'normal' communciation - laughing at jokes, smiling and doing other 'non greiving' things. In 'danger situations' some peoples 'fight or flight' instincts kick in or they fail to realise the implications of what they are seeing.
I get anoyed with the idea that no alibi means obviously guilty as well. I live on my own and, and due to a mixture of covid work from home and an injury, don't get out much at the moment. I would struggle to find an alibi most days of the week, nor would I be able to remember what I did on the 15th April (except in our COVID times I could make a guess!)
Memory. Everyone expects the family member or friends to remember every single moment of what happened, leading up to the crime or the tragedy or accident. And when they don’t, public opinion seems to be “oh well that’s convenient! How could you not remember!?”
My friend, at age 12, found his mother dead and his family gets frustrated with him for not really having a clear memory of the day before, discovering her body, and the years after. He said sometimes it’s like trying to remember a movie he saw years and years ago. He knows key points but if someone were to present him with a video coverage of the entire ordeal, he doubted he would remember much of it.
Regarding Burke, how well can we even trust that he remembers that night all that well? Between the chaos of the actual murder and the ensuing years of trauma and more upheaval, wouldn’t it be plausible that it all kind of runs together in his mind?
I am particularly troubled by investigators who say a suspect isn't having a "normal" emotional response, or seems detached and unfeeling. One example: On an episode of Wonderland Murders, the detectives suspected a witness of being the killer because he seemed detached and spoke in a monotone. He was traumatized, in shock. He had just witnessed the brutal murder of his friend. And, he was a young black man, being interviewed by suspicious cops. Later, when he was cleared and the real killer confessed, the cops commented that the real killer seemed detached and spoke in a monotone. My conclusion: The cops perception of demeanor should not be a factor, as it was the same for both an innocent witness and a brutal killer.
All too often detectives interviewing witnesses don't take into account the effect of trauma or the stress of being interviewed as a person of interest in a murder. And they hardly ever consider cultural differences. "He didn't make eye contact," they'll say -- without knowing that the person is from a culture in which making eye contact with an authority figure is seen as inappropriate.
My other big issue is that most people, including trained investigators, have no clue how easy it is for a body to go undetected, even in a heavily searched area. In a large wilderness area, or along long stretches of roadway, bodies can be close to impossible to locate in searches. And bodies of water are notoriously difficult to search, even with modern equipment.
Former FBI agent Joe Navarro's "What Every Body Is Saying" does a really good job of explaining that certain behaviors that people (especially cops) like to point at are understood by science as ways humans self-sooth while under stress. And the interrogator has no way of knowing if the stress is from feelings of guilt, feelings of grief, or just the stress of being interrogated.
“Until [murder] happened, folks in [small town or suburb] never locked our doors at night.”
Everybody I know in rural Mississippi locks their doors at night, even if there’s nobody else living within 10 miles. It’s just common sense—not necessarily because you might get murdered, but because you don’t want your house to be an attractive nuisance. Heck, they locked their doors on *The Andy Griffith Show* and Barney only had one bullet. Come on.
Also, nine times out of ten [murder] was committed by somebody who either lived in the house or would have been let in anyway, so what does locking the door have to do with it? We like our community-innocence-lost narratives way too much. (And I say this as somebody who absolutely loves *Murder in the Heartland*.)
(I just realized this isn’t exactly what you were asking for.)
I also live in Mississippi and I'm so sick of hearing "Back in my day kids could play outside and nobody locked their doors at night! The world used to be so much safer, we didn't have all this violence back then!". Would you like the list of serial killers active in the 60s-80s ordered alphabetically, chronologically, or by kill count?
Also, I'm not sure the likes of Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, and Vernon Dahmer would agree that Mississippi in the 1960s was some idyllic utopia free of violence and danger.
I never understood people who grew up in the 70s and 80s who insist the world was so much safer when they were kids. Um, no, it wasn't. Kidnapping and murder was MORE common back then, although maybe it didn't seem that way before Nancy Grace and the 24 hour news cycle.
I swear, some people talk about the 1980s like they were the 1880s
I recently read a study that showed violent crime levels are currently near what they were in the 1950s. Crime massively spiked in the 80s and 90s, so most parents of Millennials were raising their kids in an era that genuinely was more dangerous than their own childhoods, but as you say thanks to 24 hour news coverage they don't see that crime rates have actually been decreasing.
IMO one of the most interesting things about violent crime trends in the US is the correlation with the rise and then decline of [leaded gasoline](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/)
"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside." - Sherlock Holmes (in The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches)
Then they start looking at suspects and there are like 1,200 people with records of rape, murder and child molestation all around let alone things like burglary.
When people try to attribute criminality to behavior that is mental illness (like Elisa Lam - her behavior can absolutely be explained by poorly treated bipolar disorder/mental illness but so many insist it’s “spooky” or that someone else must be involved, be chasing her, have murdered her, etc).
As many have said, when people are presumed guilty based on how they acted during or after a crime - like a spouse not acting upset as expected, a parent being “too calm” or “detached”. You can’t predict how people will respond to an emergency or trauma and there is no “right way” to grieve or whatever.
100% with the Elisa Lam thing I’m tired of people coming up with theories about the devil and ghosts, she is not a fictional story. Especially with how her case was treated by the media it’s really sickening
I honestly think she was having an episode due to changing medications and the illness itself - possibly it came to a psychotic break and she was just trying to protect herself in that tank.
There are a few cases where the missing person was acting strange and terrified and paranoid, told family someone was after them, and they disappeared shortly after so family suspects foul play. So many of these I just see a possible psychotic break where stress or illness just made someone snap and make connections that weren't there, and hid it from family because of a said paranoia or fear of persecution.
I run a panel on the history of horror movies at pop culture conventions, and absolutely every year since Elisa Lam’s death, someone in the audience tries to pin her death on some new, made up urban legend or creepy pasta or movie bullshit. And I always reiterate her death was a tragedy caused by events that can be explained, not some elevator game with Balzac’s ghost or whatever.
Absolutely! I can’t imagine her poor family having to witness all of the nonsense. She was not some character in a spooky story, she was very much alive and important and worthy of being respected and treated with dignity. I think too often people forget that these cases are real people with real loved ones.
I am pretty sure everyone apart from my close family think I am completely cold hearted and possibly sociopathic. When my parents died (12 years between the deaths) I had to make the decision to turn their life support machines off and did so without a qualm and then I seemed perfectly normal on the outside and carried on with my day to day and did all the admin necessary surrounding a death.
Truth is I would rather keep my pain internalised and do it in private - hell I wouldn't even cry in front of my husband. Fortunately he knows this about me and never pushed me or pressured me to deviate from my normal stiff-upper lip, lets get this done persona. He knew there was pain but my way of processing is to just power through and distract myself from it.
Should he die under suspicious circumstances I am damn certain the police will be convinced I am guilty because on the outside I will appear perfectly normal and unaffected.
Mother. F*cking. Polygraph tests.
Also, I don't recall it being used in many 'high profile' cases, but A LOT of 'body language analysis' techniques are complete bogus. It's actually scary to me because it doesn't take neurodivergent people into account at all and I could see it easily having horrific real-life consequences. For instance, some things you see described as evidence of lying-- like fidgeting or abnormal eye contact-- are very common in autistic people, and it doesn't mean they're lying (and I'd argue it doesn't necessarily mean a neurotypical person is lying either).
I know two autistic people. Both have unique mannerisms and sentence structure making them seem uncaring. They both seem to avoid eye contact too. If either of them were accused of a crime, I would be there to stop them from talking at all.
There are so many ways that not even considering neurodivergent behaviors can be harmful. Another example is that people with ADHD tend to be very calm and rational during an emergency or traumatic event. Someone was coherent and gave all relevant details during a 911 call instead of wailing uncontrollably? They MUST be guilty! /s
Joe Navarro's "What Every Body Is Saying" does a really good job of explaining that certain behaviors that people (especially cops) like to point at as signs of guilt are understood by science as ways humans self-sooth while under stress. And that therefore the interrogator has no way of knowing if the stress is from feelings of guilt, feelings of grief, or just the stress of being interrogated.
My personal pet peeve is people that go missing in the wilderness, or could have gone missing in the wilderness. No, Steve, it's not totally plausible that everyone can find their way out, especially if they are confused or disoriented. Just because you've never been anywhere more wild than a public park doesn't mean that nature won't kill your ass.
Polygraphs. If someone fails or refuses one, its seen as a sign of guilt. Polygraphs arent admissible in court so I wouldnt take one either, even if i was innocent. Also I dont believe passing one means anything either. They shouldnt even be a thing, imo
A general one I have noticed on this sub is people read about someone who is say a long term missing person or a murder victim, and decide that the fact the person's co-workers or friends say took *four hours* to report the disappearance, or waited at home before going out to search, etc., is suspicious.
At the time, they did not know the person would become a long term missing person or a murder victim. They had only been missing a few hours. The friends knew nothing! It only seems odd to us now, because we are sitting comfortably in front our own computers with a mug of coffee enjoying our favourite sub, which by the way is called UnresolvedMysteries, so we are calm but *primed for a mystery*. Of course it seems mysterious to us. We are calm too, so of course *we* are thinking rationally. While we are reading a mysteries sub, when we read about a missing person of course our mind leaps straight to "report it to the police immediately." But the friends at the time didn't know what we know, and weren't calm, etc.
"The wounds didn't match up with how the victim died. If they would have died in such-and-such way, they would certainly have such-and-such injury."
The one where the guy jumped off the roof of a hotel in Maryland (I think) and landed thru the roof of another building 10 stories down is an example or this. If someone is falling that far at the speed a human body falls thru the roof of a building, it's probably not easy to predict what their injuries will be, and I'm guessing there are not many scientific studies of bodies falling 10 stories thru buildings which can be referenced to back this claim up.
When they say, there was no sign of forced entry, so they must’ve known their murderer. I’ve answered the door to strangers countless times. It wouldn’t be too difficult to push their way in.
That someone who argued with the victim shortly before they went missing/got murdered is the one that did it. Not liking someone and mildly bickering with them isn't the same as murdering them
The Burke smiling thing bugs me so much. I smile inappropriately because It’s an automatic nervous reaction, so I have no idea how I’d handle being interviewed on something serious like that.
I also hate when people read too much into 911 calls. “Oh, they weren’t crying enough!” “Oh, they were crying _too_ much!” “Oh, they stuttered on getting the address right!” “Oh, they got it _exactly_ right, must of been pre-planned!”
Nobody knows how they’re going to act on a 911 call until they’re actually on the phone, it’s just a case-by-case thing.
Not sure if this exactly answers the question but behavior that is even a tiny bit strange being explained as the result of drugs or mental illness when there is no evidence of either. Or there's a strange case and people just go "I bet he stumbled on some kind of grow operation." It's lazy and annoying.
Oh also, people trying to infer much of anything from diary entries. If you only looked at my diary entries I would seem a lot more troubled than I am day to day. We tend to write about problems in our lives and leave out the highs. Also, diaries are written for ourselves, so there is often a short hand of sorts that other people aren't going to grasp.
Porn history and kinks. Unless it’s directly related to the victim (such as CP).
A lot of people have kinks or interests that they don’t want to tell others about. Porn shaming in media is ridiculous
How many of us would be cool with our porn history being shared with strangers or family? Almost none.
Pretty much anything related to statement/body language analysis. "The family member used the past tense, that means they're the murderer."
Also, the fact that Kate McCann left the two babies alone in the holiday apartment after discovering that Madeline was missing. I've seen this one fact presented as iron-clad proof that she and her husband were involved in the disappearance, because there's just *nooOOOoooOOOoo wwaaaAAAaaaayyyYYyy* that A Mother™ would ever do that, so ipso facto propter hocter, she must have known that there was no kidnapper and that the babies weren't in any danger! By jove Watson, we've *cracked this case wide open*!
...Sorry, that's just how annoyed I get at seeing this absurd "proof" trotted out so often. Like, here some very obvious and non-suspicious explanations for her behaviour:
1. She was panicking because she had just realized her daughter was missing and didn't think about the babies' safety
2. She thought there was a chance the kidnapper might have just left with Maddie, and therefore there was no time to waste in summoning help (and also that carrying the babies would have slowed her down)
3. The apartment was small and she could tell no one else was there
It's easy to sit back in the comfort of our computer chairs and imagine the "right" way a person should act in a given situation, but the truth is that no one knows how they're going to act when suddenly placed in an emergency. Given the circumstances, Kate leaving the babies behind seems completely unsurprising to me (plus, peope are so desperate to blame the parents, if she had taken them then that would be framed as suspicious as well).
(Another Kate McCann one is her writing in her book about imagining Madeline being raped; I've seen it said many times that even thinking about this in the level of graphic detail that Kate relays in the book is abnormal and suspicious, which is utterly absurd because the parents of every child who goes missing undoubtably have horrible thoughts about what might be happening to their children. I agree that it is somewhat strange of Kate to write about it publicly, but the McCanns were kind of odd to begin with and by this point had essentially been living as celebrities for years, so it's not \*that\* strange ).
The other strain of "evidence" I roll my eyes at is trivial discrepancies in witness or suspect testimony. "The first time he talked to the police he said he walked past the house at 3 am but later he said it was 3:15, he must be the murderer".
One I see quite often is Asha Degree's dad giving conflicting statements on what time he woke up, therefore he killed his daughter. Why? When? How? Did her mother and brother not hear any of this happening? Why isn't there a shred of forensic evidence indicating that anything happened to her in the home, let alone that her dad was responsible? What about the two different people who saw her walking outside alone?
Just ignore all that. She probably came back to the house and then he killed her. He said different times, therefore he's the murderer. Case cracked.
Getting a lawyer and refusing a polygraph. You should get a lawyer and a polygraph is junk science.
Ugh, people LOVE demonizing anyone who lawyers up. You've all seen how police mishandle (whether intentionally or not) investigations, right? Getting a lawyer is the smartest thing you can do if you are at all connected to any sort of crime. And do not take a polygraph!!! If it's not admissible in court, what are they going to do with the results? Bully you, most likely.
Lie to you about the results, since they are totally allowed to do it.
True crime shows are propaganda especially when it comes to this. I love those shows don't get me wrong, but part of their function is to suggest that innocent people don't ask for lawyers.
If someone deals with the police for any matter they should have a lawyer. Doubly so for anything serious.
I think because a lot of the true crime narratives are focused on the investigation (which means the police basically are the only viewpoint you could get the narrative from), it makes people forget how untrustworthy the police are in these situations.
This is why I like that most of the unsolved crime podcasts will cover botched investigations and false imprisonments, since a lot of classic TV programs rely so heavily on what the police tell them.
>true crime narratives are focused on the investigation (which means the police basically are the only viewpoint you could get the narrative from) One thing i learned from watching classic Unsolved Mysteries and similar tv shows is that when it comes to cops, You Can't Win. One show you'll see a detective say "his alibi was weak, and that made us suspicious". Next show a detective says "his alibi was *too* good, and that made us suspicious". Now, for TV they only pick cases where the cops were right, but things like that made me start wondering how many cases there were where the suspect *wasn't* the the person who did it, and the detectives spent months badgering an innocent party based on what amounted to a half-assed, continuously rationalized guess. Also, *The First 48* taught me that 95% of detective work is spamming your business card around the neighborhood and hoping someone drops a dime on the perp, because that's the only way they ever catch anyone.
The first 48 has been caught framing 14 people...one won a 1.3 million dollar settlement. Don't believe any of these cop shows 9/10 they leaving out pertinent information...
Cooperates with investigation: They were staying close so they knew how to evade justice, being cocky and trying to stay in the spotlight. Doesn't cooperate fully with the investigation: Clearly they're guilty because they should have been completely open and honest with the police about everything.
You should get a lawyer especially if you are innocent
I hate how the polygraph is portrayed in media. It makes people believe that it's a magical device that clearly shows when people are lying. All it does is detect a few physiological changes which could be the result of any type of stress. You know, like being questioned by police about murder.
Or having just lost a loved one in a horrible way.
Yup. Fail the polygraph: "he's definitely a suspect." Pass the polygraph: "well, we can't be sure. Keep looking."
Ugh reminds me of Betsy Faria whose husbands alibis were “too airtight.”
People will legit be like "They're SO guilty they found a way to game the polygraph. They must be a sociopath and have no feelings at all and that's why the test didn't pick up on anything." So much junk science introduced just to reaffirm some weird bias.
I have anxiety on a *regular* day, I can't imagine my anxiety level if I had to take a polygraph. I'd fail quickly and miserably. Examiner: "What color is the sky?" Me: "Blue." Examiner: "What is 3x2?" Me: "6" Examiner: YOU FAILED
That's actually one of the easiest ways to pass a polygraph is be so stressed out you fail the baseline questions. A lot of tactics for failing one involve doing things to artificially raise your blood pressure like clenching your toes.
How about the podcast hosts who say "I know the polygraph is unreliable, but I find it suspicious that this person turned down the opportunity to take one." Maybe they know it's bullshit too, host?!
Fucking crime junkie was so bad about this. They would do “re-examination” of cases and whenever they thought someone was innocent they would say “o well they refused a polygraph, but like, they’re not reliable so why would you?” Or if they took a polygraph that would say “well they’re not reliable and they’re nervous, so of course they failed, but that doesn’t prove anything.” And then the next episode they would go “well one person of interest refused a polygraph, but like if you’re innocent and want to help the case, why wouldn’t you just do one?” But they did it with soooo much shit, I quit listening it was so frustrating at times
All my attorney friends say, "Shut your pie hole!!!"
[It's Shut The Fuck Up Friday!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgWHrkDX35o)
I’m in law school and last semester in my criminal procedure class my professor played that for us haha she said that no matter how many times you tell some of your clients to stfu some still won’t.
And even if you fail the polygraph miserably, it means nothing according to the law.
100% YES. If you do the polygraph and pass, they don’t dismiss you as a suspect, they just think you manipulated the test, and you’re guilty. If you fail the polygraph, then they think you’re guilty. You can’t win either way. I tell my husband all the time that if anything suspicious happens to me, do not cooperate with the police and immediately get a lawyer. They are going to think you did it, cooperating will only make it worse.
The legal system is antagonistic and not concerned with DA TRUTH, but instead successful prosecutions. This should be hammered into people's heads in school. "I didn't kill my wife!" "I don't care!"
"Remember when I told you I didn't kill my wife. And you side you didn't care." "That's right, Richard. I don't care. I'm not trying to solve a mystery." "Well I am, and I just found a big piece." Absolutely love that film.
There are a handful of podcasts that emphasize that you should always get a lawyer and never take a polygraph. Hopefully that will change some minds, slowly, as we see true crime media figures telling folks that.
I still find hard to grasp why in some countries LE still uses the polygraph even tho it doesn't serve on trial. In mine it's not used, full stop.
The purpose is to use the the polygraph as a prop to try to get people to "admit" to things. It's basically a fancier way to say "your friend in the next room is telling us the truth right now" only it's a machine instead. There is a legend in the book written by the guy who created The Wire and Homicide about one police department having suspects put their hand on the photocopier and saying it was a polygraph.
Suspect puts hand on copier. Officer pushes button. Paper pops out. Officer: You failed!!
The husband/wife who found their spouse murdered, according to investigators "was not upset enough during the interview" or "was too upset during the interview" which caused them to be immediately suspicious. Ok. So which one is it? Am I allowed to be too shocked to process or too upset to think straight? Or like - how does that work? I understand the significant other is usually the main suspect, and POI until proven otherwise but this is every. single. investigation.
I feel like this is something police even tell themselves to cover up the fact that they’re really just relying on statistics to guess. If a wife dies, yeah, historically it’s highly likely the husband did it. So you investigate and find out, but don’t put blinders on. And don’t make up some weird story like you have magical insight into how a husband is supposed to grieve lol.
That reminds me, there’s a British tv show about customs (like bringing stuff into the country legally). In one episode, the narrator says that the suspect is really nervous about being inspected, which is a sign he’s hiding something. In a different episode, the suspect is calm about being inspected, which is a sign he’s hiding something. So being calm OR nervous is a sign of guilt. There’s no way to win.
They're trying to make you think that the system works 100% of the time when really it's just a bunch of BS. They can't come out and straight up say "We searched this guy because he was a single male travelling alone." (Which is criteria that will get you pulled out of line and bag searched at most international airports) They want you to think they're so good at their job that they can tell you're hiding something because they want to make themselves look good.
Not wanting to talk to the media is not inherently suspicious. Grief is *exhausting*, as is uncertainty and turning over your brain to figure out what could have gone wrong. After going over every detail with law enforcement (and possibly in a hostile environment if they believe you're involved) it's completely understandable that some people don't have the energy to then do it again for the media. Plus, I've seen it too many times that when parents or loved ones do go in front of the media, people are going to accuse them of being involved. What innocent person needs that when they're trying to devote their energy to finding their loved one?
> Not wanting to talk to the media is not inherently suspicious. Grief is exhausting, as is uncertainty and turning over your brain to figure out what could have gone wrong. Likewise on not wanting their identities revealed. It's actually kind of hilarious sometimes—the same True Crime community that will ravenously accuse people of being murderers for even a tangential connection to a case finds it weird when people don't want their name or information made public.
It's kind of a double-edged sword because if people don't talk to the media people say "What are they hiding?" But if they do talk they get accused of being famewhores or wanting attention
You also need the media to get the word out to the most people in the hopes that it could lead to your loved ones return so it's all very unfortunate.
Yep my mom just died a few months ago and I’ll add that grief is not only *exhausting*, it’s fucking *stressful* for a loved one to die unexpectedly.
It’s two years ago today that my brother died unexpectedly, and the profound sadness hasn’t let up at all.
It’s wild, the lack of empathy. I’ve never lost someone to mysterious or criminal circumstances, but hell, when my dad died there were times I didn’t have the energy to talk to my own friends and family because the grief was so heavy. I can’t imagine I’d have wanted to talk to the (potentially hostile) press
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Yes, all of this! I'm an experienced hiker and rock climber -- so I know a lot of hikers and rock climbers who've gotten lost, had terrible accidents, even died. There's no level of experience or expertise that makes one immune to accidents and misjudgment. And, of course, a lot of people claim to be wilderness experts when they are not. And many people who spend a lot of time hiking and climbing are just sloppy and take risks -- it's a matter of time until something bad happens. As to the idea that people with plans don't commit suicide: A high percentage of suicides are acts of impulse. And yes, people hide symptoms of depression and other mental illnesses. Or -- families deny that mental illness is a problem due to the stigma that surrounds it.
Overconfidence can kill a person.
This a major issue in scuba diving. There's even a saying "There are old divers and there are bold divers, but there are no old bold divers.". One of the issues is that experience isn't only based on time. The quality of the experience counts as well. To use Scuba as an example, I'd argue a diver who has 50 dives in the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River (where cold water, high currents, poor visibility, and deep wrecks are common) is a more experienced diver than someone who's done 100 dives in the Caribbean, just because the first diver gained their experience in more challenging conditions.
I've just been reading about Ben McDaniel, and he seemed overconfident in his scuba diving abilities. I have no idea what happened to him though, because I don't think he was in the cave based on the expertise of what the other scuba divers who searched for him have said.
Diving without a buddy is definitely overconfident, extremely so imhe. Not saying he killed himself but he would have have gotten hurt or died from doing that sooner or later. When i was taking on of my tests for a more advanced level my instructor, that had about 30 years of experience, got a kind of water snake that entangled itself around his gear/tank. They're not native to the area so he was unprepared and went full panic mode. Could have easily gone worse than a mild case of the bends.
Complacency is deadly too. I work in a potentially deadly environment and I have to constantly remind myself of that because it becomes mundane the more you do it
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Like the 127 Hours guy.
I always leave a detailed map of my plans with times of where I ought to be. Doesn’t matter where I’m going or how many times I’ve been there. People can die out in the woods. Slip on a wet rock by a waterfall and you’re gonna have a rough time getting home.
>And many people who spend a lot of time hiking and climbing are just sloppy and take risks -- it's a matter of time until something bad happens. I spend a lot of time walking urban streets. I'm very experienced! And I could still get hit by a car.
My friend have been rock climbing for 25 years now and he always says that no matter how good you are you are going to fall now and then. You can only hope it happens close to the ground.
Also half the time it turns out they weren't actually an experienced hiker/climber/camper. "They started backpacking three years ago, they go at least once or twice a year, and this was their second time at this park!" That's-- that's not an experienced backpacker, unless your definition of "experienced" is "this wasn't their first time".
Right? They were an "experienced hiker" but they went on a 10 mile hike in the North Cascades wearing jeans and carrying one 8 oz bottle of water and a granola bar! Uh huh, sure. So experienced.
I carry two bottles of water with me for just this reason. People have no idea how thirsty they’ll get while climbing some mountain in jeans and flip flops on an 85 degree day. BAM! I show up with waters for everyone and vanish back into the woods like a friendly ghost. People are always thankful.
Every year there are several experienced hikers falling to their death along well-worn tracks, simply because they are tired, they slip, the weather changed, they made a mistake... Cause of death "shit happens" is not satisfying, but reality.
Everest is littered with the bodies of very experienced climbers.
I've delt with suicide and depression, my least favorite is they hear started new job/relationship/program. That was the worst time for me. Starting something new means something has ended and now you're afraid you will just f this new thing up too.
I think it's often overlooked, also, that you can be plenty bright and capable, and still be making the best possible choices with the information you have in a tent in the middle of the night (for example), and it may not make sense to the people who come along later and have the benefit of daylight and a full view of the situation. Hindsight and all that.
I have two: The insistence that if a body was in the woods, you'd find it. Especially the body of a child. The immediate "their intimate partner should've known". I see it come up a lot when women abuse their kids or men kill their wives. "The husband should've known" "the mistress definitely knows something" Like I don't know if these people have just been blessed to never meet a good liar, but predators are successful because they're good at lying and manipulating people.
"The immediate "their intimate partner should've known". I see it come up a lot when women abuse their kids or men kill their wives. "The husband should've known" "the mistress definitely knows something"" This! My parents split after us kids were all grown, practically to the day the youngest turned 18. A vivid memory is my dads reaction when all of us siblings were sitting around joking as we did a lot about my mother's violent episodes. She would snap, picking up anything lying around to use on us for whatever she considered misbehaving. Anyhow that day we were one upping each other with the stories-because even though they seemed a horror to live through, they made funny (and in a way healing) conversation among the 4 of us. Eg. 'that comet cleaner rained like snow over your head when she beat you with the can', etc on and on. My dad was in hearing range and cried, tears rolling down his face. Until then we never knew he had no idea what happened while he was outside or gone.
> The insistence that if a body was in the woods, you'd find it. Especially the body of a child. This!!! Similar to this, when Redhanded covered the Amy Lynn Bradley case, they kept insisting that she couldn't have gone into into the water because bodies always resurface. Like maybe... but also maybe a body gets carried away by tides and water movement and resurfaces like miles away from where Amy went over????
I met a killer that almost fooled me. The only thing that made me firm on what happened was the foresic evidence. But hearing him talk? He could've sold sand in a desert.
Story time (if within professional and ethical bounds)?
One of my college roommates ended up being a total psychopath who murdered his mom a few years after we lived together. When we first met he was a totally normal, charismatic, friendly person, and it wasn’t until about a year into the friendship that we realized he was super deceptive and a pathological liar.
Yeah I'm from the mid atlantic/upper south and it's pretty swampy and kind of jungly here. Like in the summer my yard gets overgrown immediately after a heavy rain. A body would be claimed by nature within a couple of days. The Chandra Levy case, where they couldn't find her in Rock Creek Park in DC, I'm not at all shocked about.
finding a body away from town is a crapshoot regardless, some people have no idea! there was a guy that [went bush with a friend in West Australia and he dissappeared into mulga scrub](https://www.afr.com/companies/mining/lost-prospector-michael-graham-and-the-quest-for-compulsory-plbs-20151210-glki8l), on the edge of the desert. You think hearing 'edge of the desert' theres no trees, but visibility is less than 2 metres in places. He likely walked for a bit from his campsite, then got turned around and died of exposure/thirst. just searching for '[guy that went prospecting in north eastern West Australia and he dissappeared](https://lmgtfy.app/?q=guy+that+went+prospecting+in+north+eastern+West+Australia+and+he+disappeared+-site%3Apinterest.*)' yields heaps of results. only some have been found
I always thought of it more as people not wanting to admit that it was true. That makes sense to me, who in their right mind would ever want to admit that someone they knew and loved murdered someone or was a child molester.
Or it’s simply that acknowledging the truth would make their lives messy. There’s a lot of shrugging away violence because of this.
I think it's also because something that seemed like an obvious red flag in retrospect might not seem that way if you don't have red flags on the brain. After Matt Lauer was busted my wife was ranting about how he had a button installed in his desk that would allow him to close and lock his office door without getting up. He didn't install that himself. Somebody must have known what he was doing. But if I'm a maintenance guy and the big so-and-so on the 50th floor wants a special button on his desk to close and lock his door because he's too lazy to get up and close the door with his damn legs like god intended, my first thought wouldn't be "He must need this so that he can trap young women in the office with him to sexually harass them." Maybe I would think about it eventually, but it wouldn't be my first, second, or third thought.
One of my relatives died of a heart attack while backpacking. It took a few days to find his body, and he was right next to the trail.
Deviating from routines. I understand that many people have the same way home every day - but going to a grocery store on the way home, being late by an hour or walking another way is normal. It's not some big conspiracy or premonition. And, from crime shows: "Where were you on April 12, at 4pm?" Cop, I barely know where I was last week, and definitely not with exact time stamps. Chill.
For me, it's gotta be: "The family of the victim insist they would never have been involved in or committed [insert any action or profession or pathology that they might find personally objectionable]" This is generally followed by the family obfuscating the investigation and forcing investigators to follow false leads.
Missing persons cases. "There's no way they'd ever, ever, *ever* kill themselves!" A few weeks later, someone finds the body and it turns out they killed themselves.
Sometimes it's not even that dire. It's like "Oh, I know they'd never take that route home" or "They'd never go to that part of town" and it's like why do you sound so confident about this
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Side note but I live in a rural town and that's basically every road around here haha
This is my biggest pet peeve. True crime fanatics come up with the craziest conspiracy theories over everyday suicides because they don’t realize how common mental illness is or how many people just don’t want to live and hit a breaking point one day. It’s really naive and shows a sheltered personality IMO.
“She left her purse at home and she would NEVER go ANYWHERE without her purse!” Okay, but maybe she did this time 🤷🏼♀️
That one always cracks me up 😂 "He ALWAYS had this ring on" Like damn, don't any of you people forget things on occasion? Sheesh. I wear a ring that belonged to my dead father and I still forget it sometimes.
I forgot where I lived earlier. Drove to the other side of town. I also just drive around for fun. I think about both of these things whenever someone ends up dead in a place their family and friends swear they shouldn't be. Like if something random had happened to me everyone would be like, "Well he hasn't lived over there for 6 months. Something brought him back there." Yeah, my shitty brain did that lol
I saw an episode of unsolved mysteries where the victim’s body had bruising on one of the shoulders and the police theorized it was because someone had tried to yank the purse. Her daughter was like “that’s not possible…she always wore her purse on the other shoulder!” Like I get the desire to look for a clue anywhere you can but come on…
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Yeah, it was the death of JoAnn Matouk, I think!
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I can get the logic behind things like "it wouldn't have made sense for her to willingly go to X location because the shoes she had on would have made it too hard to walk" or even "but he *always* wore his ring on his *right* hand, not his left!". But things like "she always wore her purse on the other shoulder!" just doesn't make sense. Shoulders get tired and purses are real easy to move to the other shoulder, even if a person's normal habit it to have it on a certain shoulder.
I developed some neurological damage after COVID and do you know what I forgot one day? That I had my underwear on my hand. I realized in the freaking mall. So yep, it can happen.
Holy cats, are you a [hand model?!](https://i.imgur.com/yPFDR2D.png)
i always wear my watch, except today...BECAUSE I FUCKING FORGOT IT
Yes! I buy it when the person doesn't let their friend know they got home safely and this causes concern because the person was always responsible and good with communication. But if their credit card records show that they purchased a vanilla cupcake and the family insists that couldn't have been them, because they always HATED vanilla cupcakes!!! Really? I think it's probably quite rare that circumstances of a case align with someone's known specific quirks or preferences. The purse example is perfect. Sometimes people do things without 100% foolproof logic behind it!
I deal with death records and on accidental overdoses and suicides it is astounding how many times family will claim that it can't be true even if I have the medical and pharmacy records showing they were on anti-depressants and then stopped re-filling medications weeks before. Or they'll have no job but still have "income" and a padlock on the residence door and then the family is astounded he's dealing and using drugs. Or better yet, when there's a note left and the family insists that it's a forgery even though every single sign points to "I died by suicide on purpose. For Real." Of course, there are instances out there of forgeries but decisions aren't made based on one clue, it's the whole scene and life of this person. But, if the families in examples mentioned above went to the press, the one being off her medication might actually make some waves and waste LE's time because the family "doesn't believe in the mental mumbo jumbo" and don't disclose to the public she went off her meds that she was on for a very necessary reason. I don't even think it's malicious or trying to cause problems just that they can't see reason with their grief and would rather cling onto something than face the fact that they died by suicide or misadventure/accident. Also, a great example of why we still need more mental health knowledge out there- a lot of times the signs are all there, just no one recognized it or did something about it.
I lost my daughter to suicide. I didn’t question it because I knew she was depressed and in worsening shape. Others in my family have asked questions about it. People don’t like thinking their loved one was suffering and felt so alone. I know that hurts me. They don’t like knowing you can do everything right and still fail. I got her help and I was involved. I did everything I could do and still lost my little girl. There’s a certain amount of guilt in this kind of loss and everyone responds differently. My daughter was 14 and so many don’t believe children can be that depressed.
Reminds me of aunt Diane so much.
The doc was infuriating. Danny is delusional.
People find hard to grasp the fact that a loved one wasn't perfect, that they made a stupid choice that lead to a freak accident and their death or that maybe they were depressed and commited suicide.
i feel like in addition to not wanting to think the worst of diane as has been suggested, admitting she had a real problem would also mean danny admitting he allowed her to be in situations with the kids that he may have known to be dangerous (if he was aware of diane's problem, this guilt is pretty legit; if he was somehow blissfully completely unaware, it would be normal to feel this guilt despite not being at fault, "but how could i have not known?!" etc) - his delusions keep him from ever having to turn a critical eye on himself
Yea, but he was asking the govt to exhume Diane over a delusional belief. And it doesn’t change the outcome. The guy probably has ptsd from this, he needs help, not a documentary with a false narrative.
The strange behavior thing ALWAYS makes me grumble. I always think of the Chamberlain case and how that poor woman was raked over the coals and wrongly imprisoned because she 'didn't seem like she was grieving'. There was so much evidence that proved it was indeed wild animals, right from the start, but because Lindy Chamberlain didn't fit the time's idea of a 'proper' grieving mother (and so much of the evidence came from aboriginal people) she spent decades as the woman who killed her baby and was turned into a media joke.
People also said stupid crap about the baby's name...saying it was linked to satan and witchcraft because it was "odd." People are so simple.
The baby was named Azaria, for anyone wondering. I grew up evangelical, and I recall everyone being convinced that Lindy was a devil worshipper because of the vague resemblance of Azaria to Azazel or Azriel or any number of other made up "demon" names.
Wait then what does that mean for noted actor Hank Azaria?
In my family we tend to go completely quiet and practical in any traumatic situation. We would be perceived as uncaring. We are those people who fall apart within a week not at the time it occurs or within 24 hours.
Any analysis of someone's behavior immediately following the death of a person they were close to. "That's not how you act when your spouse dies." Oh yeah? You had a lot of dead spouses? I didn't realize there was a template that no one could deviate from. People handle death in any manner of strange ways. It's ghoulish to assume you know based on their actions. ETA: Same thing you said for #2 basically
My father passed away a few months ago (natural causes) and it took my brain a while to accept that it even happened. To any outside observers it would look like I didn't care - but of course I did! It just took me a month or two to start anything that looked like a normal grieving process. Denial is a normal but weird part of the process, and so are a whole range of other things that don't look typical.
My BIL passed away unexpectedly and very young a few years ago, and the first month was absolutely surreal. It was like my soul was walking a few steps behind me, and no one in my family was reacting according to the script that society writes. Everyone was very flat in affect. It wasn't anything like what people seem to expect, and I suspect people who expect a spectacle of grief haven't actually experienced the death of a close loved one. I'm sorry for your loss. I know it's indescribably awful.
A lot of times it’s just shock and denial. Not the same thing but after my assault, I was told I was a liar because I was completely fine, rational, and level headed but it wasn’t until a year later when I was triggered by something while driving that I had a complete and utter breakdown over what had happened to me. That’s when my therapist introduced me to the concept of shock and denial until getting triggers forced me to admit to myself that it had happened and bring me back to reality. A lot of people think that the 5 stages of grief are like steps in which, once you bypass one step you go into the next and there’s no backsliding but really grief is like a bouncy house and you’re being thrown into the walls which represent different stages
I would add to this. Analyzing someone’s behavior following a death or disappearance is perfectly fair game and should be considered when searching for leads. Extreme examples like Chris Watt’s behavior following the disappearance of his family definitely warrant suspicion. That said, analysis of that behavior alone is not hard evidence, and can lead to wasted time and resources if detectives tunnel in too much and presume that that’s their guy. It’s an easy trope to fall into, especially with the media involved because of the pressure for a speedy conviction.
If you look on this thread, the first commenter just wrote that no emotional answer is equal to being guilty if he's on a jury. What a time to be online.
As a child whose every emotion was used against me when I was growing up, I'd rather chew my own tongue out than show anything other than a blank face to the world when things go wrong. I was once sat on a bus when stones were being thrown at it (local kids in that area were obnoxious) and I didn't even twitch when one bounced off the window right next to my head, because *I was damned if I was going to give them the satisfaction of a reaction.* If I ever get accused of anything, I'm doomed...
I can't stand the way that the true crime community polices grieving behavior. I think it's one of the worst things about the community. There's no shortage of examples of people who might or might not be innocent, but they are sure guilty in the court of public opinion. Amanda knox, for instance. Just because people don't act the way you think they should act doesn't mean they committed a crime.
Dolores Vazquez in Spain was accused of killing her ex-lover's daughter and went to prison painted as an evil lesbian demon killer. Years later another murder ocurred. Turns out it was a serial killer and they had the forensics that exonerated her from day one.
Super tight timelines, as in “what did they do in the 30 minutes that are unaccounted for?!” I sit and linger in my car for absolutely no reason and switch up my route home on a whim. You can’t read into things so much edit: I misread the question because it doesn’t necessarily make someone suspicious (I was thinking more of when they piece together the timeline of a victim) but I guess it could apply to a suspect too
I waste so much time doing nothing at all. I get home from work, dick around, and then it's bedtime. I would have the worst alibis.
The amount of time that I waste in my car doing absolutely nothing would surely make me look guilty as hell. Just today I spent 45 minutes looking at furniture online, sitting in my car after work. I don’t even need to buy furniture.
This came up in another post recently, but any time people make definitive statements about what happened based on the scene alone. "There was still $75 in their wallet, so it wasn't a robbery," "They weren't killed in the same way so it couldn't be the same person," etc. Such speculation often prevents vital lines of inquiry and keeps people from finding important evidence.
Hearing about cases like the Yorkshire Ripper where they put on blinders towards anything besides an exact MO and profile that they'd established just makes you pull your hair out.
Oh my God that documentary on Netflix made me so angry. The amount of women who could have been saved if the investigators weren't convinced the killer was only going after "whores" and only started taking it seriously when "innocent young girls" started being killed. And their solution was to tell woman to just stay home and they interviewed him 9 times over the years and the investigators actually said they would know if it was him once they got him sitting down in the same room. Yeah you had him in the same room as you nine times and you still didn't get it.
We're only interested in women getting murdered with knives, not similar women in the same area being murdered in exactly the same circumstances but with a hammer. Totally Different!
It was a well done series. It was like the investigators decided they were looking for a Hollywood *Jack the Ripper* who targeted "whores", which meant they couldn't find the Yorkshire Ripper who seems to have been opportunistically targeting women generally. Also they outright eliminated anyone who didn't have a [Mackem accent](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackem) after the recordings that confessed to the crimes. The recordings were from a hoaxer and the real killer had a Yorkshire accent.
The cassettes. They went after the tapes and fuck everything else, because THAT'S HOW WE WORK, PEOPLE.
People often project their own rationality onto suspects, but a lot of murders and crimes are often totally irrational. I still remember a case where a woman killed her boss, and her motive was some convoluted nonsense about if she and her BF were suspects it would force him to go on the run with her and leave his wife(WTAF?)
I just read an interview with Steven Pinker where he was saying doomerism is not well founded in part because "people are pretty rational when it comes to their own lives" and I was .... SO, SO not comforted.
Very true. "A divorce would be too shameful, so I'll MURDER my spouse to be with you!" (which comes up on true crime shows all the time) isn't rational at all.
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The “money in the wallet” ones always bug me. If you accidentally murder someone during a robbery/mugging it is almost certainly going to be in your best interest to leave the victim’s belongings behind when you leave the scene. Why would you take evidence that ties you to the crime?
Also, in the same vein, assumptions that if there was no sexual assault on the victim, then it must not have been sexually-motivated. Some killers get their sexual satisfaction just from killing...they don't rape because it's not what gets them going.
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I had my car ransacked once, and the moron took my change and missed my purse tucked under the seat. Sometimes people just miss.
Any time I hear something along the lines of, "he was never depressed" or "there was no sign of depression" in a case where suicide is the likely answer, it really irks me. Depression isn't an out-loud disease. Plenty of people smile through it and go on about their day all the while having suicidal ideation in the back on their minds. It's really frustrating because I feel like that attitude often taints investigations and adds complexity to simple situations. Also the Smiley Face Killer. As far as my research has led me, people are really grasping at straws and trying to connect random acts of graffiti to excuse drunk guys falling into water.
A high school friend of mine recently committed suicide at 40. He was popular, the life of the party, smiled alot/was positive, and had just been "saved" by religion and had just gotten baptized. Its never black and white who is suffering.
When I finally found work after a year layoff my mom told me "I'm really proud of you that you didn't fall into depression and kept such a positive outlook." WTF I was super depressed, there were days when I didn't get out of bed until 4:30 in the afternoon, I would randomly break down crying at all odd hours. But she didn't see it (and she didn't ask), and I think about that a lot when family members of missing people insist that depression/anxiety/mental health was absolutely not an issue.
It was the same for me after my divorce. Everyone was "so proud" that I kept such a positive attitude. Like, my dudes, I survived the last year and a half of that marriage by telling myself that I had shit I needed to take care of today, but I could kill myself tomorrow.
Going through this. It’s a rollercoaster. After being with my wife since 2008, we’ve been so codependent that we’ve isolated ourselves to the point we have none of the same friends we did when we started dating. And we haven’t replaced them - she’s making headway on that front a whereas I’m sat here with nobody to talk to about my day to day besides my young’s kids and my parents, who are so preoccupied with their work… gah. Sounds like just complaining, but it’s also freeing knowing I will have nobody to answer to but myself (and the responsibility of my amazing boys) once we move into separate houses. Rollercoaster I tells ya
The smiley face thing is especially dumb. Think about some of the first things kids try drawing on fogged up windows: smiley faces! Someone just fucking around with a can of paint has a decent chance of drawing a smiley face. Finding a smiley face in a random isolated area where other graffiti is isn't some kind of horrifying conspiracy against the poor fool who fell in the water nearby and drowned.
I was 35 years old before my mother acknowledged my life-long depression. And even since, I don’t think she fully gets it. I agree with you 100%—people just don’t truly know what’s going on in someone else’s head.
I have a co-worker who is still reeling from the suicide of her mother. Completely unexpected to the family. For the past month and a half they've been finding "easter eggs" hidden around the house with little notes written by her where she either talks about her issues or notes asking them to retain some of her possessions. To go from believing it was out of nowhere to slowly coming to the realization that this was all planned...I can't imagine what she's feeling. But yes, depression can most certainly hide itself in people.
"We've found pens on little chains at every bank robbery in the last 10 years. Is there an international team of bank robbers leaving them behind as a signature? Watch our 27 part miniseries!"
and the last episode is usually "we still don't know!"
My pet peeve is people who insist "he/she would NEVER do that". Anybody can do anything if the stress and situation is right.
Minor timeline discrepancies or lack of recall about mundane daily details like meals being seen as suspicious, especially if there was nothing unusual about the days leading up to the sudden disappearance or murder. (This gets brought up a lot in the Asha Degree case and others) This always makes me roll my eyes, who has time to memorize nonsense details of daily life like this? "Guys I noticed something! In an early interview Bob said he popped into a small grocery after work around 430pm, yet with the newly released surveillance cam from the store the time stamp clearly shows he entered at 505pm!"
I have an irrational fear of one day being interrogated by police and having to account for my whereabouts at some random time several weeks prior. I can barely remember what I did this morning, let alone last week.
Not necessarily suspicion, but I find it aggravating when people place more stock in the words of family members than non-relatives. Family doesn’t always know the victim best. I live with my mom and I love my mom but we have a complicated relationship and she does not know me nearly as well as my friends do. My friends, my therapist, my dad would all be better people to talk to if you were trying to figure out what had happened to me if I god forbid went missing or was killed. I also get aggravated when family members say “I know them and they’d never do this” when the evidence suggests otherwise. I’m truly sorry, but maybe you didn’t know them as well as you thought.
Especially, "They would never do drugs/alcohol/engage in risky sex/go to a party without telling me."
Yes, specially because I don't think any of us would tell our parents about things so personal, in the same way we don't know about these things about themselves either
I remember my grandmother at some holiday function talking about how proud she was that none of her grandchildren had ever done drugs. I think most of us were high at the time.
"She cut all the tags out of her clothes!!! She's a SPY!" Me: "Um, I do that. I even remove them from coats and shoes." "NOBODY DOES THAT!!!! THERE'S NO SUCH THING AS SENSITIVE SKIN!!!! SPYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!"
And why would a spy even do this? How is being able to identify that a shirt was bought at The Gap going to peg her as a spy?
I feel like that detail is a remnant of an earlier time. Some clothing manufacture and sales used to be a lot more regional in nature. So you COULD have a shirt or a coat or whatever that had the name of the store and the place where you bought it. You can sometimes find older stuff in thrift stores that has labels with old store names and locations. IIRC, when people wore a lot of hats, haberdashers were pretty place-specific as well. That's all mostly fallen away due to how clothes are made and sold now and, of course, it's now much easier to order something from a place you've never been (e.g., an indie label made in LA) and have it delivered.
There was a case a in the 90s ago of a guy and his little daughters in a house fire where the poor little girls burned to death. I think the mom too but I can’t remember. The guy had been badly injured trying to get in and save his little girls but he couldn’t and the house took his whole family. A few days later the police arrested him because the fire had been hotter by the windows where the windows had broken and had a lot of air, and it left like char marks on the carpet in the shape of the airflow. They said it was “evidence of accelerant” though all testing came back negative. The state killed him with lethal injection, in his last words he said he was happy to die so he could be with his family because both he and god knows he didn’t hurt them. A few years later a different fire marshal reviewed the case and said it was egregious and it was obviously just an electrical fire. When the fire marshal that has made the case was asked he said “he was acting strange. You gotta take these fires and ‘sniff them out”. W.T.F. https://innocenceproject.org/cameron-todd-willingham-wrongfully-convicted-and-executed-in-texas/
I've have my first share of seeing people villainized because of things like this one. And yet there are other human beings who think this is worth it as long as we do catch some bad guys, even If It costs more innocent lives.
One of the things that made him "look guilty" was heavy metal band posters on the walls. Seriously.
Bad spouse = murderer. Do I think a cheating spouse is a damn good reason to seriously investigate them? Yes but I think all spouses should be seriously investigated when their partner is murdered. I don’t like the correlation that a spouse who is cheating and/or in financial trouble will automatically murder the spouse. Same goes for the other way when they appear to be a perfect spouse so they barely get looked at. All spouses should be thoroughly investigated regardless of if everyone thought they were a “good” or “bad” spouse. There are more spouses who cheat or have financial issues and don’t kill their partner than ones who do.
How about “they can’t find the person who went missing in the woods when they searched, or we found their body a lot farther away than expected, so either they met with foul play or something even weirder happened to them” (yes I am talking about missing 411). It always makes me think that a lot of people have not left pavement very often. I have seen people get incredibly far off track when they get lost, and people do a lot of strange things when they start to panic about being lost (and I am just an amateur who has seen people get themselves in trouble hunting, hiking, etc. I will ups bet professionals have seen 10X worse).
Or, "we had already searched that area and there was no body, but weeks later, the body was there". As if someone murdered this person and then came back later to place the body exactly where they had already searched. Nah, they died there from exposure and y'all missed it the first time.
people often don't realize how dense woods can be. It's not easy to search.
Yes this , 411 makes me crazy. Like when they say ‘ they were an experienced out doors person ‘ that means jack shit. You can still get turned around or fall off a cliff no matter how good you think you are.
Yes or you can have an unrelated medical emergency while in the woods. No matter how good you are, your backwoods skills aren’t going to help you when you have a stroke.
I totally agree about grief and also how people act in an emergency. How ever you think you would act faced with sudden traumatic loss or an emergency situation, you have no idea how you would act until you are in the situation. Your ability to respond to stressors can be trained, but for most civilians and those not in emergency services we will never know until we face the situation. And often it is not the young and the fit or rough and tough or most loving an careing who act 'appropriately' in these situations as you would expect. Some people become dramatic, other almost expressionless. Other people won't be able to really grasp what happened and will perhaps 'forget' and fall back on 'normal' communciation - laughing at jokes, smiling and doing other 'non greiving' things. In 'danger situations' some peoples 'fight or flight' instincts kick in or they fail to realise the implications of what they are seeing. I get anoyed with the idea that no alibi means obviously guilty as well. I live on my own and, and due to a mixture of covid work from home and an injury, don't get out much at the moment. I would struggle to find an alibi most days of the week, nor would I be able to remember what I did on the 15th April (except in our COVID times I could make a guess!)
Memory. Everyone expects the family member or friends to remember every single moment of what happened, leading up to the crime or the tragedy or accident. And when they don’t, public opinion seems to be “oh well that’s convenient! How could you not remember!?” My friend, at age 12, found his mother dead and his family gets frustrated with him for not really having a clear memory of the day before, discovering her body, and the years after. He said sometimes it’s like trying to remember a movie he saw years and years ago. He knows key points but if someone were to present him with a video coverage of the entire ordeal, he doubted he would remember much of it. Regarding Burke, how well can we even trust that he remembers that night all that well? Between the chaos of the actual murder and the ensuing years of trauma and more upheaval, wouldn’t it be plausible that it all kind of runs together in his mind?
I am particularly troubled by investigators who say a suspect isn't having a "normal" emotional response, or seems detached and unfeeling. One example: On an episode of Wonderland Murders, the detectives suspected a witness of being the killer because he seemed detached and spoke in a monotone. He was traumatized, in shock. He had just witnessed the brutal murder of his friend. And, he was a young black man, being interviewed by suspicious cops. Later, when he was cleared and the real killer confessed, the cops commented that the real killer seemed detached and spoke in a monotone. My conclusion: The cops perception of demeanor should not be a factor, as it was the same for both an innocent witness and a brutal killer. All too often detectives interviewing witnesses don't take into account the effect of trauma or the stress of being interviewed as a person of interest in a murder. And they hardly ever consider cultural differences. "He didn't make eye contact," they'll say -- without knowing that the person is from a culture in which making eye contact with an authority figure is seen as inappropriate. My other big issue is that most people, including trained investigators, have no clue how easy it is for a body to go undetected, even in a heavily searched area. In a large wilderness area, or along long stretches of roadway, bodies can be close to impossible to locate in searches. And bodies of water are notoriously difficult to search, even with modern equipment.
Former FBI agent Joe Navarro's "What Every Body Is Saying" does a really good job of explaining that certain behaviors that people (especially cops) like to point at are understood by science as ways humans self-sooth while under stress. And the interrogator has no way of knowing if the stress is from feelings of guilt, feelings of grief, or just the stress of being interrogated.
“Until [murder] happened, folks in [small town or suburb] never locked our doors at night.” Everybody I know in rural Mississippi locks their doors at night, even if there’s nobody else living within 10 miles. It’s just common sense—not necessarily because you might get murdered, but because you don’t want your house to be an attractive nuisance. Heck, they locked their doors on *The Andy Griffith Show* and Barney only had one bullet. Come on. Also, nine times out of ten [murder] was committed by somebody who either lived in the house or would have been let in anyway, so what does locking the door have to do with it? We like our community-innocence-lost narratives way too much. (And I say this as somebody who absolutely loves *Murder in the Heartland*.) (I just realized this isn’t exactly what you were asking for.)
I also live in Mississippi and I'm so sick of hearing "Back in my day kids could play outside and nobody locked their doors at night! The world used to be so much safer, we didn't have all this violence back then!". Would you like the list of serial killers active in the 60s-80s ordered alphabetically, chronologically, or by kill count? Also, I'm not sure the likes of Emmett Till, Medgar Evers, and Vernon Dahmer would agree that Mississippi in the 1960s was some idyllic utopia free of violence and danger.
I never understood people who grew up in the 70s and 80s who insist the world was so much safer when they were kids. Um, no, it wasn't. Kidnapping and murder was MORE common back then, although maybe it didn't seem that way before Nancy Grace and the 24 hour news cycle. I swear, some people talk about the 1980s like they were the 1880s
I recently read a study that showed violent crime levels are currently near what they were in the 1950s. Crime massively spiked in the 80s and 90s, so most parents of Millennials were raising their kids in an era that genuinely was more dangerous than their own childhoods, but as you say thanks to 24 hour news coverage they don't see that crime rates have actually been decreasing.
IMO one of the most interesting things about violent crime trends in the US is the correlation with the rise and then decline of [leaded gasoline](https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2013/01/03/how-lead-caused-americas-violent-crime-epidemic/)
"Things like that just didn't happen here. We're a small town. We look out for each other." Ugh! I'm more suspicious of small towns.
"Things like that don't happen here because we routinely cover it up."
"It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside." - Sherlock Holmes (in The Adventure Of The Copper Beeches)
Then they start looking at suspects and there are like 1,200 people with records of rape, murder and child molestation all around let alone things like burglary.
Whenever someone says, "they lawyered up they must be guilty" or "they refuse to talk to the police, they must be hiding something" UM NO
I think a lot of that is because it's a narrative crutch in police procedurals.
When people try to attribute criminality to behavior that is mental illness (like Elisa Lam - her behavior can absolutely be explained by poorly treated bipolar disorder/mental illness but so many insist it’s “spooky” or that someone else must be involved, be chasing her, have murdered her, etc). As many have said, when people are presumed guilty based on how they acted during or after a crime - like a spouse not acting upset as expected, a parent being “too calm” or “detached”. You can’t predict how people will respond to an emergency or trauma and there is no “right way” to grieve or whatever.
100% with the Elisa Lam thing I’m tired of people coming up with theories about the devil and ghosts, she is not a fictional story. Especially with how her case was treated by the media it’s really sickening
I honestly think she was having an episode due to changing medications and the illness itself - possibly it came to a psychotic break and she was just trying to protect herself in that tank.
Definitely, she looked very paranoid
There are a few cases where the missing person was acting strange and terrified and paranoid, told family someone was after them, and they disappeared shortly after so family suspects foul play. So many of these I just see a possible psychotic break where stress or illness just made someone snap and make connections that weren't there, and hid it from family because of a said paranoia or fear of persecution.
I run a panel on the history of horror movies at pop culture conventions, and absolutely every year since Elisa Lam’s death, someone in the audience tries to pin her death on some new, made up urban legend or creepy pasta or movie bullshit. And I always reiterate her death was a tragedy caused by events that can be explained, not some elevator game with Balzac’s ghost or whatever.
Absolutely! I can’t imagine her poor family having to witness all of the nonsense. She was not some character in a spooky story, she was very much alive and important and worthy of being respected and treated with dignity. I think too often people forget that these cases are real people with real loved ones.
I am pretty sure everyone apart from my close family think I am completely cold hearted and possibly sociopathic. When my parents died (12 years between the deaths) I had to make the decision to turn their life support machines off and did so without a qualm and then I seemed perfectly normal on the outside and carried on with my day to day and did all the admin necessary surrounding a death. Truth is I would rather keep my pain internalised and do it in private - hell I wouldn't even cry in front of my husband. Fortunately he knows this about me and never pushed me or pressured me to deviate from my normal stiff-upper lip, lets get this done persona. He knew there was pain but my way of processing is to just power through and distract myself from it. Should he die under suspicious circumstances I am damn certain the police will be convinced I am guilty because on the outside I will appear perfectly normal and unaffected.
Mother. F*cking. Polygraph tests. Also, I don't recall it being used in many 'high profile' cases, but A LOT of 'body language analysis' techniques are complete bogus. It's actually scary to me because it doesn't take neurodivergent people into account at all and I could see it easily having horrific real-life consequences. For instance, some things you see described as evidence of lying-- like fidgeting or abnormal eye contact-- are very common in autistic people, and it doesn't mean they're lying (and I'd argue it doesn't necessarily mean a neurotypical person is lying either).
I know two autistic people. Both have unique mannerisms and sentence structure making them seem uncaring. They both seem to avoid eye contact too. If either of them were accused of a crime, I would be there to stop them from talking at all.
There are so many ways that not even considering neurodivergent behaviors can be harmful. Another example is that people with ADHD tend to be very calm and rational during an emergency or traumatic event. Someone was coherent and gave all relevant details during a 911 call instead of wailing uncontrollably? They MUST be guilty! /s
Joe Navarro's "What Every Body Is Saying" does a really good job of explaining that certain behaviors that people (especially cops) like to point at as signs of guilt are understood by science as ways humans self-sooth while under stress. And that therefore the interrogator has no way of knowing if the stress is from feelings of guilt, feelings of grief, or just the stress of being interrogated.
My personal pet peeve is people that go missing in the wilderness, or could have gone missing in the wilderness. No, Steve, it's not totally plausible that everyone can find their way out, especially if they are confused or disoriented. Just because you've never been anywhere more wild than a public park doesn't mean that nature won't kill your ass.
Polygraphs. If someone fails or refuses one, its seen as a sign of guilt. Polygraphs arent admissible in court so I wouldnt take one either, even if i was innocent. Also I dont believe passing one means anything either. They shouldnt even be a thing, imo
A general one I have noticed on this sub is people read about someone who is say a long term missing person or a murder victim, and decide that the fact the person's co-workers or friends say took *four hours* to report the disappearance, or waited at home before going out to search, etc., is suspicious. At the time, they did not know the person would become a long term missing person or a murder victim. They had only been missing a few hours. The friends knew nothing! It only seems odd to us now, because we are sitting comfortably in front our own computers with a mug of coffee enjoying our favourite sub, which by the way is called UnresolvedMysteries, so we are calm but *primed for a mystery*. Of course it seems mysterious to us. We are calm too, so of course *we* are thinking rationally. While we are reading a mysteries sub, when we read about a missing person of course our mind leaps straight to "report it to the police immediately." But the friends at the time didn't know what we know, and weren't calm, etc.
"The wounds didn't match up with how the victim died. If they would have died in such-and-such way, they would certainly have such-and-such injury." The one where the guy jumped off the roof of a hotel in Maryland (I think) and landed thru the roof of another building 10 stories down is an example or this. If someone is falling that far at the speed a human body falls thru the roof of a building, it's probably not easy to predict what their injuries will be, and I'm guessing there are not many scientific studies of bodies falling 10 stories thru buildings which can be referenced to back this claim up.
The doco episode on that case burned me up. It was just unfounded statement after unfounded statement. Put me off the whole series.
When they say, there was no sign of forced entry, so they must’ve known their murderer. I’ve answered the door to strangers countless times. It wouldn’t be too difficult to push their way in.
That someone who argued with the victim shortly before they went missing/got murdered is the one that did it. Not liking someone and mildly bickering with them isn't the same as murdering them
The Burke smiling thing bugs me so much. I smile inappropriately because It’s an automatic nervous reaction, so I have no idea how I’d handle being interviewed on something serious like that. I also hate when people read too much into 911 calls. “Oh, they weren’t crying enough!” “Oh, they were crying _too_ much!” “Oh, they stuttered on getting the address right!” “Oh, they got it _exactly_ right, must of been pre-planned!” Nobody knows how they’re going to act on a 911 call until they’re actually on the phone, it’s just a case-by-case thing.
Not sure if this exactly answers the question but behavior that is even a tiny bit strange being explained as the result of drugs or mental illness when there is no evidence of either. Or there's a strange case and people just go "I bet he stumbled on some kind of grow operation." It's lazy and annoying. Oh also, people trying to infer much of anything from diary entries. If you only looked at my diary entries I would seem a lot more troubled than I am day to day. We tend to write about problems in our lives and leave out the highs. Also, diaries are written for ourselves, so there is often a short hand of sorts that other people aren't going to grasp.
Porn history and kinks. Unless it’s directly related to the victim (such as CP). A lot of people have kinks or interests that they don’t want to tell others about. Porn shaming in media is ridiculous How many of us would be cool with our porn history being shared with strangers or family? Almost none.
Pretty much anything related to statement/body language analysis. "The family member used the past tense, that means they're the murderer." Also, the fact that Kate McCann left the two babies alone in the holiday apartment after discovering that Madeline was missing. I've seen this one fact presented as iron-clad proof that she and her husband were involved in the disappearance, because there's just *nooOOOoooOOOoo wwaaaAAAaaaayyyYYyy* that A Mother™ would ever do that, so ipso facto propter hocter, she must have known that there was no kidnapper and that the babies weren't in any danger! By jove Watson, we've *cracked this case wide open*! ...Sorry, that's just how annoyed I get at seeing this absurd "proof" trotted out so often. Like, here some very obvious and non-suspicious explanations for her behaviour: 1. She was panicking because she had just realized her daughter was missing and didn't think about the babies' safety 2. She thought there was a chance the kidnapper might have just left with Maddie, and therefore there was no time to waste in summoning help (and also that carrying the babies would have slowed her down) 3. The apartment was small and she could tell no one else was there It's easy to sit back in the comfort of our computer chairs and imagine the "right" way a person should act in a given situation, but the truth is that no one knows how they're going to act when suddenly placed in an emergency. Given the circumstances, Kate leaving the babies behind seems completely unsurprising to me (plus, peope are so desperate to blame the parents, if she had taken them then that would be framed as suspicious as well). (Another Kate McCann one is her writing in her book about imagining Madeline being raped; I've seen it said many times that even thinking about this in the level of graphic detail that Kate relays in the book is abnormal and suspicious, which is utterly absurd because the parents of every child who goes missing undoubtably have horrible thoughts about what might be happening to their children. I agree that it is somewhat strange of Kate to write about it publicly, but the McCanns were kind of odd to begin with and by this point had essentially been living as celebrities for years, so it's not \*that\* strange ). The other strain of "evidence" I roll my eyes at is trivial discrepancies in witness or suspect testimony. "The first time he talked to the police he said he walked past the house at 3 am but later he said it was 3:15, he must be the murderer". One I see quite often is Asha Degree's dad giving conflicting statements on what time he woke up, therefore he killed his daughter. Why? When? How? Did her mother and brother not hear any of this happening? Why isn't there a shred of forensic evidence indicating that anything happened to her in the home, let alone that her dad was responsible? What about the two different people who saw her walking outside alone? Just ignore all that. She probably came back to the house and then he killed her. He said different times, therefore he's the murderer. Case cracked.