gations in another respect. So, police offi cers would be wise to interrogate
carefully if they have reason to believe that a suspect has characteristics that
make them susceptible to confess.
Situational c haracteristics
Should we then conclude that the nature of the interrogation is more relevant
to identifying false confessions? That depends. Let us take extreme interroga-
tions, those conducted under torture, or situations that come close to it. These
are situations, we can assume, in which almost anyone will confess. If the police
create a situation in which everybody or almost everybody confesses, the con-
fession cannot distinguish between innocence and guilt, and thus would be
meaningless as evidence (Wagenaar, Van Koppen & Crombag, 1993 ).
In the world of the regular police in Western society these kinds of inter-
rogation situations are presumably rare. Nevertheless, there are all kinds of
situations that may bring some or many suspects to make a false confession.
For instance, in The Netherlands the court can order a suspect to be held in
solitary confi nement if free communication will hamper the police investiga-
tion. That means that a suspect is kept in his cell 23 hours a day, is not allowed
to read newspapers or watch television, or communicate with anybody except
his/her attorney and is then taken out of the cell to talk to two friendly police
offi cers. It can be expected that any suspect will be happy to talk in these
circumstances. Although we do not have solid experimental studies – ethical
considerations prevent such studies – it can be expected that this situation will
increase the probability that suspects will make a confession. And if the prob-
ability of a making a confession increases, so does the probability of making a
false confession.
In this vein there are all kinds of police methods that may increase the
probability of a false confession. But, again, that is not the question. We want
to establish whether a particular confession is false or not. Even under duress
a suspect may make a true confession. But at the same time, if we have a
Finding False Confessions
57
susceptible suspect who has been interrogated under circumstances that are
known to increase the probability of making false confessions, there is good
reason to scrutinize the confessions made, as in the following case.
Ceci n ’ est p as u ne c onfession *
Ofshe (1989) , based on a case study, suggested that in order to make a false
confession, the suspect is persuaded to do two things. First, the suspect has
to accept that he committed the crime, even though he does not remember
doing so. Second, the suspect has to be led to believe that there is good reason
that he cannot remember anything about the crime (see also Ost, Costall &
Bull, 2001 ).
A good example of Ofshe ’ s contentions is the Sneek balcony murder. On
9 November 2004 Dennis, his girlfriend and his best friend Ronald went to
spend the afternoon with Dennis ’ s granny, who lived in a fourth fl oor apart-
ment in Sneek. They all started drinking. In the afternoon Dennis and his
girlfriend went their own way, but Ronald and granny continued drinking. At
6 pm granny fell from the balcony and later died in the hospital. At that time
she had a very high blood alcohol level of 0.36%.
The question is, how did she fall? That is not decided very easily. There was
a single witness who cycled past the apartment building minutes earlier. He
says that he saw the old woman hanging over the balcony in a very hazardous
way. The cyclist, though, did not take the trouble to stop and wait to see what
would happen next. There was no one else who could in any way be called an
eyewitness.
But something else happened. After granny fell, Ronald rushed downstairs
and knelt next to her. A police offi cer, by then present at the scene, heard
Ronald say: ‘ I pushed my friend Dennis over the balcony ’ , or words to that
effect. Other witnesses more or less said the same thing. Ronald was arrested
and at the police station he maintained that the person who had fallen was his
friend Dennis. His blood was tested and was found to contain 0.28% of
alcohol. Later that evening Ronald was told that the deceased was not Dennis
but his granny.
Ronald was pretty drunk. But after he sobered up, he was interrogated; in the
coming days for some 15 hours in total. During these interrogations, he made
a full confession. My colleague Marko Jelicic of Maastricht University tested
Ronald and concluded that he is of fairly low intelligence, makes a lot of cogni-
tive errors and distrusts his own memory, was suffering from psychological
problems at the time of the interrogations, and is suggestible and comp liant. He
suggested that the court have experts take a closer look at the interrogations.
I served as an expert witness in this case. Ronald had certainly confessed,
but in an odd manner. I base the following on studying the case fi le and on
the tapes of the interrogations.
* After Ren é Magritte, La trahison des images , 1928 – 29.
58
Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
In its basic form, the interrogation went as follows. Two police offi cers kept
on talking to Ronald to convince him that he had thrown granny over the
balcony by accident. After they succeeded in that, they set about convincing
Ronald that he had done it deliberately. In the third stage, they convinced
Ronald that he had a motive: an argument about a library card. Ronald con-
fessed to it all, but in a particular way. To everything he admitted to, he added
a qualifi cation. He seems highly compliant, when he says things like:
Then I hope I ’ ve got it right this time … pffft. (interrogation 10 November
2004 at 15h 11).
I have been racking my brains about it all night. (interrogation 10 November
2004 at 15h 21).
The police offi cers encourage this:
Interrogator : You can deal with it better if you tell your story again and then
again and then again.
Ronald :
Of course, of course.
(interrogation 10 November 2004 at 16h 12).
But at the same time Ronald is in ignorance. He says things like:
Interrogator : Some people saw you there, didn ’ t they?
Ronald :
Yes, that is possible. Pffft, we didn ’ t fi ght. That is almost impos-
sible, it was a very sociable afternoon.
… I drank a lot,
though, so I don ’ t know any more.
(interrogation 10 November 2004 at 17h 12)
Interrogator : Did your attorney know you pushed granny over the railing?
Ronald : Uh
… no, because I myself don ’ t know that.
(interrogation 11 November 2004 at 12h 18)
Interrogator : Do you know that for sure?
Ronald : No,
I
’ m not sure. I can ’ t remember that. I am sorry, I am very
sorry. Really.
Interrogator : So in reality, you don ’ t know?
Ronald :
I really don ’ t know. I ’ m sorry.
(interrogation 10 November 2004 at 18h 5
3)
Ronald :
This says that I am responsible for the death of granny. But is
that defi nite?
Interrogator : OK, so you aren ’ t.
Ronald :
Now, I really don ’ t know.
Interrogator : How do you feel about it yourself?
Ronald :
It can hardly be otherwise.
Interrogators : That is what we mean.
(interrogation 14 December 2004 at 14h 42)
Finding False Confessions
59
For Ronald the interrogation is a form of reconstruction. Together with
the interrogators he tries to reconstruct what might have happened when
granny fell. The reconstruction is aided by some misleading techniques that
seem obvious to anyone watching the videotapes of the interrogations, but
seemingly not to the interrogators and Ronald.
First, Ronald is encouraged to guess all the time. The interrogators even
use phrases like: ‘ You ’ re getting warm. You are not completely there, but you
are getting warm ’ (interrogation 13 November 2004 at 14h 50).
Second, the interrogators stress that Ronald can remember everything, but
for some reason now has trouble in telling the whole story. When he knelt
down next to the body of the dying granny, he knew:
Interrogator : That remark came from your subconscious at that moment.
There you were completely stressed and you did not have
the ability to think ‘ Hey, I am going to tell it differently from
how it really is ’ . … it came from your heart.
(interrogation 12 November 2004 at 10h 05).
Third, the interrogators apply the well known minimax strategy ( cf. Vrij,
1998 ; Inbau, Reid, Buckley & Jayne, 2001 ) for example:
Ronald :
I am still sure that I did not push granny on purpose. I wouldn ’ t
dare.
Interrogator : No, not on purpose, but maybe by accident.
Ronald :
It must have happened by accident. But I should have been
aware of that, shouldn ’ t I?
Interrogator : You must be able to remember that – these kinds of things are
remembered.
Ronald : I
don
’ t know.
Interrogator : The consequences are so enormous, aren ’ t they? For all parties
involved it is really sad.
(interrogation 10 November 2004 at 19h 09)
In this way, the interrogation is presented as a common enterprise to restore
Ronald ’ s memory:
Interrogator : You now know a lot more than you did yesterday. You are
doing very well.
(interrogation 10 November 2004 at 19h 56)
Interrogator : But from now on it is going to get better. Because now we are
working on a solution together, the three of us.
(interrogation 11 November 2004 at 11h 07).
Ronald:
Well, I hope I am doing all this right.
Interrogator : What
wouldn
’ t you do right?
Ronald :
Well, because I am so uncertain about what happened, because
I know so very little.
(interrogation 11 November 2004 at 11h 08)
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Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
Interrogator : You also want to know the truth, don ’ t you?
Ronald :
Yes, for sure, absolutely.
(interrogation 11 November 2004 at 14h12).
Ronald :
The strange thing is that I myself hardly remember anything.
… I ’ ve just lost whole pieces.
Interrogator : Then we must go deeper into everything and maybe things
will come back to you. I think that the prosecutor will
not be at all pleased this afternoon if someone says: ‘ I do not
know, I do not know, maybe I pushed her. ’ He wants a
clear story. If it is not for your benefi t, it is for the victim ’ s
family.
Ronald: I
’ m trying to cooperate fully.
Interrogator : You have certain responsibilities. If you were fucking around
with your drunk head on the [balcony] railing and dropped
[her] over it, then you are responsible.
(interrogation 12 November 2004, 9h 51)
Note that in this case there is no possibility of checking the information in
the confession. There are no eyewitnesses, there is no trace evidence; even the
manner in which granny fell from the balcony is unclear. The police made a
full reconstruction of how granny might have fallen and established that, if
she is 1.78 m tall, then she could have been pushed over; but if she was only
1.72 m, that would be impossible. The problem is that granny ’ s height is
unknown. The pathologist measured her at 1.79 m, but it is a known fact that
people lying down are longer. Granny ’ s passport states that she was 1.72 m
and a doctor she visited a year earlier measured her as 1.69 m. Thus, all the
information Ronald gave in his confession complies with how the police think
everything happened and not necessarily with what really happened, because
nobody knows.
What is more, Ronald does not know for a simple reason: he was too drunk
to remember ( cf. Van Oorsouw, Merckelbach, Ravelli, Nijman & Mekking -
Pompen, 2004 ). The police convinced him about facts that are their recon-
struction of events. Ronald consistently admitted to these facts but qualifi ed
this by saying that he cannot remember and the police offi cers have convinced
him that this is what must have happened. His lack of memory is also evident
from a letter Ronald wrote six months later, in which he apologized to granny ’ s
family. In the letter Ronald asserts that he is offering his sincere apologies
because he ‘ must have killed ’ granny.
The Sneek balcony murder confession appears to be unproblematic at fi rst
sight for several reasons. First, the suspect apparently is telling a rather com-
plete story. At a second look, the story is completely built on suggestions from
the interrogating police offi cers. Second, there seems to be no strong inter-
rogation or some form of duress for the suspect. In fact, real duress is not at
all necessary to obtain a false confession. (See, for instance, some Dutch cases
Finding False Confessions
61
where we know a false confession was obtained, such as the Schiedam Park
murder [Van Koppen, 2008 ] or the Putten murder case [Wagenaar & Crombag,
2005 ].)
In the Putten murder case two men were convicted of raping and murder-
ing a young woman, Christel Ambrosius. Christel visited her grandmother
who lived in a cottage on the edge of the woods on Sunday, 3 October 1995.
As granny was out visiting friends when she arrived, Christel collected the back
door key from the barn. Inside the house she was raped and murdered. Four
men were arrested and subjected to lengthy interrogations. All four confessed,
although one of them, Wilco Viets, did so as if he was recounting his dreams.
Two suspects confessed to having stood outside, looking inside watching the
other two committing the crimes. Wilco Viets and Herman Dubois confessed
to the rape and murder and were convicted, even though semen found on
Christel ’ s leg of did not match that of any of the s
uspects. Also, the four
confessions were different and incompatible and on many aspects did not fi t
the scene of the crime either. Years later Viets and Dubois were acquitted in
a retrial. The other two have never been prosecuted.
The four men confessed to four separate pairs of police offi cers. The inter-
rogations were taped, but the tapes were only used to write up the statement
summary and then reused. As far as I can tell (I served as expert witness in
the retrial of the case; see also Blaauw, 2002 ; Wagenaar & Crombag, 2005 ),
the interrogations were not very harsh. The four suspects were brought
to their confessions by interview tactics, of which six could be identifi ed.
First, the suspects were led to doubt their own memory. Second, they were
encouraged to talk hypothetically about how the crime might have been com-
mitted. This was followed by discussions of how the crime was actually
committed once the hypothetical situations had been suffi ciently rehearsed.
Third, the interrogators used tricks as, for instance, suggesting that traces
found at the scene matched or would match the suspect. Fourth, as soon
as some of the suspects made admissions, the other suspects were confronted
with these statements. Fifth, the police offi cers gave away information.
Finally, the suspects were encouraged to speculate about the crime. If their
guesses were wrong, they were encouraged to go on; if they were right, the
guess was recorded as the suspect
’ s statement. To do all this, the police
offi cers took their time; the suspect were interrogated for many hours. As far
as is recorded, together they were interrogated on 200 different occasions,
but probably more. The summaries of the known statements run to 812
pages.
The police tactics in the Putten murder case could be demonstrated using
the summaries alone; undoubtedly, I could have said much more if there had
been tapes of the interrogations. But even then, it could not have been
expected that fi rm conclusions as to the veracity of the statements would have
been possible. My analysis concluded that one should be very cautious with
the confessions of the four suspects and even that there was support for the
hypothesis that the confessions were false. At the same time, the hypothesis
62
Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing
that these confessions were true could not be refuted from the statements
Handbook of Psychology of Investigative Interviewing: Current Developments and Future Directions Page 13
