“Call me. 911.”
* * *
* Pseudonym
8
“SOMETHING ABOUT HOW SHE SAID IT”
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
* * *
Lynnwood, Washington
Sergeant Mason remembered the woman from the day before.
When he had first walked into Marie’s apartment, she had been sitting on the sofa with Marie. She had been one of the first people Marie called for help. She had gone with Marie to the hospital.
Now, a day later, she was sitting with him—in her cozy single-story home on a curvy street with tall evergreens all around—saying she wondered if Marie had made all this up.
Mason’s tipster wasn’t some alienated friend, whispering to police, nor some ex, nursing a grudge. This was Marie’s foster mother.
When she had called Mason earlier today, Peggy identified herself by name but told the detective she wanted to be treated anonymously. She didn’t want what she had to say to get back to Marie. Mason, accustomed as he was to the clandestine world of drug investigations, found that request familiar enough and agreed to protect Peggy’s identity. He would keep her name out of his report about the telephone call—and for this conversation, the one in person, he would make no record at all.
They talked in Peggy’s living room. Peggy chose her words with care. She did not say: Marie is lying. She couldn’t say that. She didn’t know that. What Peggy offered was a suspicion, a sense that something was off.
Peggy’s skepticism didn’t spring from any one source. The roots were deep and tangled, intertwining what she knew about Marie from helping to raise her, what she had seen the day before, and what she had heard from someone else close to Marie.
Peggy had a master’s degree in mental health counseling. She had earlier been a foster-care case manager and now worked at a homeless shelter as a children’s advocate. In years to come she would work in the schools as an assistant for special-education students. She kept at home a copy of the DSM, or Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, a massive compendium published by the American Psychiatric Association that classifies disorders and is used by clinicians and others. She believed Marie could be found in those hundreds of pages—that her troubled past had given rise to some personality disorder manifesting in shallow relationships and an attraction to drama. “And it’s understandable. Her history—that’s probably how she had to get attention her whole life,” Peggy says. Histrionic personality disorder perhaps? Peggy couldn’t say for sure. But some moments made her wonder.
A few days before she had reported being raped, Marie had gone on a picnic with Peggy, Peggy’s boyfriend, and the teenage sisters who were now Peggy’s foster kids. “And it was a lot of drama,” Peggy says. “She was trying to get a lot of attention from me, I felt.” Peggy thought maybe Marie was competing, jealous of the new foster kids. And she worried that Marie couldn’t see how she was coming across. “There was some guy that was watching her because she was being so outrageously flaunty-flirty. And I tried to have a conversation with her about toning it down a little bit because, ‘You’re drawing a lot of attention to yourself right now,’ I told her. ‘First of all, it’s really obnoxious. And second of all, there’s a guy over here watching you and you don’t know what…’ ”
Yesterday, when Marie called and said she’d been attacked, Peggy had been torn. She needed to take it seriously. She knew that. And she did—rushing to Marie’s apartment, getting there the same time as the first officers. But on the way over she wrestled with another thought. “There was just another part of me that said—part of her MO is to be really, really outrageous, and to say things that make people react. That’s just part of her personality.” Even the phone call—the way Marie sounded—contributed to Peggy’s speculation. “Her voice was like this little tiny voice, and I couldn’t really tell. It didn’t sound real to me. It sounded like there was something…it sounded like a lot of drama, too, in some ways. It was like, ‘Oh, boy.’ ”
At the apartment, Peggy found Marie on the floor, crying. “But it was so strange because I sat down next to her, and she was telling me what happened, and I got this—I’m a big Law & Order fan, and I just got this really weird feeling. It was like, I felt like she was telling me the script of a Law & Order story.” Part of it was what Marie was saying. Why would a rapist use a shoelace to tie her up? That seemed bizarre. Is a shoelace even strong enough to hold someone? Why didn’t he bring rope or cuffs? And part of it was how Marie was saying it: “She was detached. Detached. Emotionally detached from what she was saying.”
When Marie said the rapist took photos, that also gave Peggy pause. Suspicion turned to supposition. She wondered if Marie had gotten into trouble somehow. Maybe she had let someone take graphic pictures of her—and now those pictures were going to appear on the Internet, so this was a way for Marie to cover up.
Peggy felt horrible about her skepticism. She didn’t want to believe that Marie was lying. But whatever her doubts, she had sensed while in Marie’s apartment—watching the police work, watching people console Marie—that she was alone in harboring them.
Later she had learned that wasn’t so.
—
For Shannon—Marie’s other parental figure, the fun mom in Marie’s extended foster family—doubt set in from the moment she heard the news.
“I remember exactly,” Shannon says. “I was standing on my balcony and she called and said, ‘I’ve been raped.’ It was very flat, no emotion.”
Marie had called Shannon on Monday, after leaving the hospital. Shannon asked if she was okay, and Marie said yes, she was going to spend the night at a friend’s—and that was pretty much it. When Shannon’s husband got home, Shannon told him about Marie’s call. She also said she didn’t know if she believed Marie. “There’s something about how she said it that made me question whether or not she’d actually been raped. It was the tone of her voice. There was no emotion. It was like she was telling me she made a sandwich. ‘I just made myself a chicken sandwich.’ ”
Shannon knew Marie to be emotional. She knew her to cry. This stoicism wasn’t in character.
And for Shannon, there was another, more personal reason to doubt Marie.
Shannon didn’t have to imagine being in Marie’s place. She had been there, or at least in a place very much like it. “I was sexually abused as a child,” Shannon says. “And sexually assaulted as an adult.” In both instances, when she had told someone—nine years afterward, in the case of the child abuse—Shannon was anything but stoic. “I was hysterical. And emotional. And crying. Yeah. Shamed.” Shannon and Marie were so much alike. How could Marie be so different now?
Before Peggy called Mason on Tuesday, Shannon and Peggy had talked on the phone—either the night before or the morning of. They were two parents, comparing notes. Peggy told Shannon that not long before Marie reported the rape, she and Marie had argued. Marie had a bike at Peggy’s place. She wanted to come over to pick it up, but Peggy said no, she wanted some downtime, and that set Marie off. Peggy told Shannon she didn’t want to think this, but maybe, for Marie, this rape story was a way to get the attention she was wanting before.
I don’t know what the hell is going on, Peggy told Shannon. I can’t tell…
Peggy, you’re not the only one who doesn’t believe her, Shannon said.
The two pondered how Marie seemed to be telling everybody about this horrific thing that had happened—calling one friend after another, saying, I’ve been raped. Some friends she called had been less than supportive in the past—mean, even. She wasn’t treating this as private and personal. She wasn’t being selective in sharing. Neither Peggy nor Shannon had known Marie to be a liar—to exaggerate, sure, to want attention, sure—but now, both knew they weren’t alone in wondering if Marie had made this up.
Shannon’s doubts reinforced Peggy’s. Peggy’s doubts reinforced Shannon’s.
Shannon’s misgivings escalated on Tue
sday, the same day Peggy was calling the police. Marie and Nattlie, her upstairs neighbor, were assigned new apartments to protect them should the rapist return. Shannon went to Marie’s to help her pack for the move. In the kitchen, when Shannon walked in, Marie didn’t meet her gaze. “That seemed very strange,” Shannon says. “We would always hug and she would look you right in the eye.” In the bedroom Marie seemed casual, with nothing to suggest she had been raped there the morning before. “She went about her business like nothing had happened.” Some friends of Marie’s came over, along with her case manager from Project Ladder, and the group ventured outside. “She was kind of flirting with the guy that ran the program that she was in. She was on the grass, rolling around and giggling and laughing. It was just such strange behavior.”
Shannon spent the whole day with Marie, noting all these things that seemed off. The kicker came that evening, when the two went shopping. Marie needed new bedding, because the police had taken hers as evidence. They went to the store where Marie had gotten her old sheets and bedspread—the ones that had been on her bed when she said she’d been raped—and Marie became furious when she couldn’t find the same set. It was the only time the entire day that Shannon saw Marie get mad—and to Shannon, it made no sense.
Why would you want to have those same sheets to remind you? Shannon asked Marie.
Because I like them, Marie said.
Shannon was so thrown by Marie’s behavior that she tried to call a crisis center to get a better understanding of how someone might react to being raped. She found a number online, but no one answered.
—
Sitting in Peggy’s home that Tuesday, Mason was in effect listening to the doubts of both of Marie’s foster moms. To Mason, Peggy seemed sincere. Forthright. She expressed concern for Marie, but felt there was information she should pass along. She shared her take on Marie’s personality. She shared her speculation about the graphic photographs.
As Marie’s last foster mom, Peggy figured to know Marie well. So did the folks at Project Ladder, the program nurturing her to independence. One of the program’s managers had mentioned to Mason that before Marie reported being raped, she had been asking to change apartments. The manager didn’t come out and say: I think she’s lying. I think she made this story up to get her way. Mason didn’t even note the manager’s aside in a report, suggesting how little it meant to him at the time. But he tucked it away. And now he tacked it on to Peggy’s suspicions. Apart, neither was worth much. Together, they took on weight.
When Mason left Peggy’s home, he didn’t know if Marie was lying. But for him the question had now been planted.
“It was a question that needed answering,” he says.
—
On Wednesday, Marie returned to the Lynnwood police station and handed Mason her written statement. She had filled in each of the form’s twenty-four lines, writing about four hundred words in total about the rape and what she had done afterward.
“After he left I grabbed my phone (which was right next to my head) with my mouth and I tried to call Jordan back.”
Jordan didn’t answer, Marie wrote. So she called her foster mom.
“I got off the phone with her and tried to untie myself. I tried a kitchen knife but it didn’t work so I found scissors and did it.”
This sequence caught Mason’s eye. It didn’t match what Marie had told him before. At the station two days earlier, when she had come in after being examined at the hospital, Marie had said that she cut the laces off first—then tried calling Jordan, then called Peggy. Her written statement switched the order, saying she was still bound when she started using the phone.
Mason made a mental note of the inconsistency. He asked Marie a few questions—about her relationship with Jordan (ex-boyfriend, now good friend, Marie said), about the gloves the rapist was wearing (latex, I think, Marie said)—then thanked her for coming in, and said he would be in touch as the investigation continued.
—
On Thursday morning, Mason interviewed Jordan at his home. This was August 14, three days after the report of rape.
Jordan told Mason about his relationship with Marie. They were no longer dating, but they were still good friends. He saw her at church study groups once or twice a week. They spoke daily on the phone. They talked about all kinds of things. There was nothing out of the ordinary about their late-night conversation before the attack, Jordan told the detective.
Mason asked if Marie had tried calling Jordan Monday morning—after the attack—but been unable to reach him. Jordan checked his cell phone. There it was, confirmation: a missed call from Marie at 7:43. That tracked: Marie tried Jordan at 7:43, then called Peggy, then called her neighbor. Her neighbor came down and called police at 7:55.
Mason asked if Marie had told Jordan about what happened that morning. Jordan said Marie told him that she had dialed his number using her toes, because she was still tied up. The detective would later note this in his report. If Marie’s Monday account was Version 1 (cut laces, then called), and her Wednesday account Version 2 (called, then cut laces), this was like a Version 2(A): called, then cut, but with a new detail about dialing with her toes.
At no point in this interview did Jordan say he thought Marie was lying about being raped. At no point did Mason even ask.
—
On Thursday afternoon, Mason called Marie, to ask if they could meet. He said he could come and pick her up, to take her to the police station.
“Am I in trouble?” Marie asked the detective.
—
Mason didn’t go alone to pick up Marie. He went with Jerry Rittgarn, his fellow detective.
Mason told Rittgarn he no longer believed Marie. He told him about Marie’s question: Am I in trouble? In Mason’s experience, when someone asked if they were in trouble, they almost always were. Mason also gave other reasons for his conclusion, although Rittgarn’s report on their conversation would be maddeningly imprecise: “He told me that, based on subsequent interviews and inconsistencies with [Marie], her foster mother and her friend Jordan, who she had talked with on the phone prior to the report, he believed and others believed that [Marie] had made up the story.”
The investigation’s focus now shifted. This afternoon Mason and Rittgarn would not be interviewing Marie as a victim. They would be interrogating her as a suspect.
For more than a half century, a particular approach to interrogation has dominated police work in the United States. Like the rape kit, this investigative tool traces to Chicago—and to a cop, John E. Reid, who became renowned for eliciting confessions without force. Reid aimed to extract admissions through words, tells, and expressions of sympathy, rather than with club and electrical wires. He became so identified with this ability that he left the Chicago police force and began training other officers in what became known as the Reid Technique.
In 1962, Reid laid out the fundamentals of his technique for the masses by coauthoring a book, Criminal Interrogation and Confessions. From that point forward, his method began gaining followers at a rapid clip, with hundreds of thousands of investigators attending training seminars “across the United States, Canada, Mexico, Europe, South America, and Asia,” according to Reid Technique literature. The technique “became a kind of powerful folk wisdom, internalized by generations of police officers,” a Wired magazine article noted, adding: “Despite its scientific pose, it has almost no science to back it up.” Mason and Rittgarn had both received the training, Mason in 1994 while a police officer in Oregon. Mason’s instructor, Louis Senese, had taught the technique for decades; during the three-day course he emphasized a tenet of questioning anyone believed to be lying: “Never allow them to give you denials. The key is to shut them up.”
A police interview is non-accusatory. It is an act of gathering information. An interrogation is accusatory. It is an act of persuasion. “An interrogation is conducted only when the investigator is reasonably certain of the suspect’s guilt,” according to Essentia
ls of the Reid Technique: Criminal Interrogation and Confessions.
With the Reid Technique, interrogators use provocative questions and are taught to gauge the response. A favorite prompt is: What kind of punishment do you think the person who did this should get? The dodgier the answer—Well, it depends—the more likely the guilt. The questioner’s tools can include trickery or deceit. A detective might claim that a witness said something he really didn’t (He says he saw you do it), or that the physical evidence shows something it really doesn’t (We found your prints on the gun). An innocent person, the assumption goes, will not take the bait. Questioners learn to evaluate verbal behavior. A definitive response? Credible. A qualified response with waffle words like “generally” and “typically”? Not so credible. Staccato is good: I / DID / NOT / DO / IT. Mumbling is bad—that is, suggestive of lying.
The Reid Technique also attaches great value to interpreting body language. Questioners evaluate feet, posture, and eye contact. “Deceptive suspects generally do not look directly at the investigator; they look down at the floor, over to the side, or up at the ceiling as if to beseech some divine guidance when answering questions,” Essentials of the Reid Technique says. If a suspect’s hands go to his face—say, to cover his mouth—that, too, can signal deception: “In this case, the subject, literally, is speaking through his fingers, as if his hand could grab, out of thin air, incriminating words the subject might utter.”
Detectives, once convinced of a suspect’s guilt, learn to close, much like any salesman. If a suspect starts to deny guilt, the interrogator heads it off—with hand held up, in the universal “stop” gesture, or with head turned away, to suggest disinterest. “The more often a guilty suspect denies involvement in a crime, the less likely it is that he will tell the truth,” Essentials of the Reid Technique says. Then the interrogator offers the suspect some face-saving out—Man, with how little they pay you, who could blame you for pocketing a little extra?—that minimizes moral culpability. As for legal ramifications of confessing, detectives are trained to avoid discussing that: “It is psychologically improper to mention any consequences or possible negative effects that a suspect may experience if he decides to tell the truth.”
A False Report Page 11
