and framed by square, black-rimmed glasses. He then regarded her French-braided, dark blond hair, the black jacket and beneath it the thick, unrevealing white blouse. He noted too the empty holster on her hip. He was meticulous and in no hurry. (Interviewers and interviewees share mutual curiosity. She told the students in her interrogation seminars, “They’re studying you as hard as you’re studying them—usually even harder, since they have more to lose.”) Dance fished in her blue Coach purse for her ID card, not reacting as she saw a tiny toy bat, from last year’s Halloween, that either twelve-year-old Wes, his younger sister, Maggie, or possibly both conspirators had slipped into the bag that morning as a practical joke. She thought: How’s this for a contrasting life? An hour ago she was having breakfast with her children in the kitchen of their homey Victorian house in idyllic Pacific Grove, two exuberant dogs at their feet begging for bacon, and now here she sat, across a very different table from a convicted murderer.
She found the ID and displayed it. He stared for a long moment, easing forward. “Dance. Interesting name. Wonder where it comes from. And the California Bureau…what is that?”
“Bureau of Investigation. Like an FBI for the state. Now, Mr. Pell, you understand that this conversation is being recorded?”
He glanced at the mirror, behind which a video camera was humming away. “You folks think we really believe that’s there so we can fix up our hair?”
Mirrors weren’t placed in interrogation rooms to hide cameras and witnesses—there are far better high-tech ways to do so—but because people are less inclined to lie when they can see themselves.
Dance gave a faint smile. “And you understand that you can withdraw from this interview anytime you want and that you have a right to an attorney?”
“I know more criminal procedure than the entire graduating class of Hastings Law rolled up together.
Which is a pretty funny image, when you think about it.”
More articulate than Dance expected. More clever too.
The previous week, Daniel Raymond Pell, serving a life sentence for the 1999 murders of William Croyton, his wife and two of their children, had approached a fellow prisoner due to be released from Capitola and tried to bribe him to run an errand after he was free. Pell told him about some evidence he’d disposed of in a Salinas well years ago and explained that he was worried the items would implicate him in the unsolved murder of a wealthy farm owner. He’d read recently that Salinas was revamping its water system. This had jogged his memory and he’d grown concerned that the evidence would be discovered. He wanted the prisoner to find and dispose of it.
Pell picked the wrong man to enlist, though. The short-timer spilled to the warden, who called the Monterey County Sheriff’s Office. Investigators wondered if Pell was talking about the unsolved murder of farm owner Robert Herron, beaten to death a decade ago. The murder weapon, probably a claw hammer, was never found. The Sheriff’s Office sent a team to search all the wells in that part of town.
Sure enough, they found a tattered T-shirt, a claw hammer and an empty wallet with the initialsR.H.
stamped on it. Two fingerprints on the hammer were Daniel Pell’s.
The Monterey County prosecutor decided to present the case to the grand jury in Salinas, and asked CBI Agent Kathryn Dance to interview him, in hopes of a confession.
Dance now began the interrogation, asking, “How long did you live in the Monterey area?”
He seemed surprised that she didn’t immediately begin to browbeat. “A few years.”
“Where?”
“Seaside.” A town of about thirty thousand, north of Monterey on Highway 1, populated mostly by young working families and retirees. “You got more for your hard-earned money there,” he explained.
“More than in your fancy Carmel.” His eyes alighted on her face.
His grammar and syntax were good, she noted, ignoring his fishing expedition for information about her residence.
Dance continued to ask about his life in Seaside and in prison, observing him the whole while: how he behaved when she asked the questions and how he behaved when he answered. She wasn’t doing this to get information—she’d done her homework and knew the answers to everything she asked—but was instead establishing his behavioral baseline.
In spotting lies, interrogators consider three factors: nonverbal behavior (body language, or kinesics), verbal quality (pitch of voice or pauses before answering) and verbal content (what the suspect says).
The first two are far more reliable indications of deception, since it’s much easier to controlwhat we say thanhow we say it and our body’s natural reaction when we do.
The baseline is a catalog of those behaviors exhibited when the subject is telling the truth. This is the standard the interrogator will compare later with the subject’s behavior when he might have a reason to lie. Any differences between the two suggest deception.
Finally Dance had a good profile of the truthful Daniel Pell and moved to the crux of her mission in this modern, sterile courthouse on a foggy morning in June. “I’d like to ask you a few questions about Robert Herron.”
Eyes sweeping her, now refining their examination: the abalone shell necklace, which her mother had made, at her throat. Then Dance’s short, pink-polished nails. The gray pearl ring on the wedding-band finger got two glances.
“How did you meet Herron?”
“You’re assuming I did. But, no, never met him in my life. I swear.”
The last sentence was a deception flag, though his body language wasn’t giving off signals that suggested he was lying.