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Speaker 5: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 5: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 5: written about him Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 5: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 5: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 5: host journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 6: Good Evening. Late one evening in the summer of nineteen
Speaker 6: twenty two, Henry Wilkins burst through the doors of the
Speaker 6: emergency room covered in his wife's blood. But was he
Speaker 6: a grieving husband or a ruthless killer who conspired with
Speaker 6: bandits to have her murdered. To find out, the San
Speaker 6: Francisco police turned to technology and a new machine that
Speaker 6: had just been invented in Berkeley by a rookie detective,
Speaker 6: a visionary police chief, and a teenage magician with a
Speaker 6: showman's touch. John Larson, Gus Volmer and Leonard Keeler hoped
Speaker 6: the lie Detector would make the justice system fairer, but
Speaker 6: the flawed device soon grew too powerful for them to
Speaker 6: control it. Poisoned their lives, turned fast friends into bitter enemies,
Speaker 6: and as it conquered America and the world, it transformed
Speaker 6: our relationship with the truth in ways that are still
Speaker 6: being felt as new forms of lie detection gained momentum
Speaker 6: in the present day. Tremmer's in the Blood reveals the
Speaker 6: incredible truth behind the creation of the polygraph through gripping
Speaker 6: true crime cases featuring explosive gunfights, shocking twists, and high
Speaker 6: stakes courtroom drama. Touching on psychology, technology and the science
Speaker 6: of the truth. Tremor's in the Blood is a vibrant,
Speaker 6: atmospheric thriller and a warning from history beware what you believe.
Speaker 6: The book that ever featuring this evening is Tremors in
Speaker 6: the Blood, Murder, Obsession, and the Birth of the lie Detector,
Speaker 6: with my special guest journalist and author Ammitt Katwawa. Welcome
Speaker 6: to the program and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 2: Ammitt Katwawa, Hi Dan, thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this truly extraordinary book.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 6: Now tell us how you came to be the author
Speaker 6: of this book.
Speaker 2: So this book was sort of born backwards, so I'm
Speaker 2: a science and technology writer and my background is in
Speaker 2: psychology neuroscience. That's what I study at the university. And
Speaker 2: about four years ago now, I was watching Making a
Speaker 2: Murder of the true crime documentary on Netflix with Steveen Avery,
Speaker 2: and in the second season of Making a Murderer, in
Speaker 2: an attempt to clear his name, Stephen Avery does a
Speaker 2: test with a brain fingerprinting test, which is a kind
Speaker 2: of new form of lie detection test that uses brain
Speaker 2: Scandal says that you can use brainscans to tell whether
Speaker 2: someone's lying. And with my science, how and I was
Speaker 2: kind of thinking, this doesn't make any sense to me,
Speaker 2: I don't I would initially quite skeptical of this test.
Speaker 2: So I ended up doing a lot of reporting into
Speaker 2: new forms of live detection, so things like AI brain scans,
Speaker 2: other new technologies and that people claimed him to detect lies.
Speaker 2: But while I was doing that reporting, which ended up
Speaker 2: being an article for The Guardian and also being part
Speaker 2: of this book as well, I also found out about
Speaker 2: the crazy history of the polygraph and the men who
Speaker 2: created it. And actually what I found was that there
Speaker 2: were parallels between what happened one hundred years ago when
Speaker 2: the polygraph was invented, and what's happening today with these
Speaker 2: new forms of light detection? And I guess the purpose
Speaker 2: of the book as well as to entertain, and the
Speaker 2: former is also to maybe strike a warning. Though we
Speaker 2: don't learn the lessons of the mistakes that were made
Speaker 2: with the polygraph, then we risk falling into the same
Speaker 2: chrap again with new forms of detection in the future.
Speaker 6: Now, let's start as you do in the book. You
Speaker 6: take us to a very incredible scene. May thirtieth, nineteen
Speaker 6: twenty two. Henry Wilkins is with his family. He's a
Speaker 6: thirty six year old and his wife is 'sanna, she's
Speaker 6: thirty four, and they're with her two children, Henry Junior,
Speaker 6: an eight year old and Helen, three years old, and
Speaker 6: they were just coming back from a Felton auto park
Speaker 6: in the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains about seventy
Speaker 6: miles south of San Francisco, where they lived. Take us
Speaker 6: to that incredible scene and what happens.
Speaker 2: Yes, so they're driving north towards San Francisco where they lived.
Speaker 2: It's kind of getting dark. Either's fog rolling in as
Speaker 2: there up in a San Francisco and Henry notices that
Speaker 2: there's a car following them. Henry's car is this bright
Speaker 2: yellow car. He's a mechanic, so he loves cars, and
Speaker 2: he's driving home with his family. He nexes this car
Speaker 2: following them, and the car's been following him for a while,
Speaker 2: and Henry notices that whenever he speeds up, the car
Speaker 2: behind him speeds up. Whenever he slows down, the car
Speaker 2: behind him slows down, And just to start coming into
Speaker 2: the city, the car kind of gets really really close
Speaker 2: to them, and he tries to speed up to get
Speaker 2: away from it, but the car kind of keeps nudging
Speaker 2: placer and closer and closer, and eventually the car forces
Speaker 2: Henry to the side of the road just in the
Speaker 2: western area of San Francisco, and Henry kind of hits
Speaker 2: the curbs, the lights go out, and then the next
Speaker 2: thing he knows is a guy standing at the window
Speaker 2: of the car pointing a gun at him, asking for money.
Speaker 2: Henry hands over three hundred dollars in cash, but then
Speaker 2: when the bandit asks for his wife's jewelry, Henry gets
Speaker 2: annoyed and he starts to reach for his gun, which
Speaker 2: he's got in the side pocket of his car, and
Speaker 2: then everything starts to happen very quickly. So what Henry
Speaker 2: says happened next is that as he's reaching for his
Speaker 2: gun to scare off the guy who's robbing him, the
Speaker 2: band that pulls out his own gun and shoots. And
Speaker 2: then what Henry says happens is that his wife, Anna
Speaker 2: throws herself in the front of the bullet, takes the bullet,
Speaker 2: the guy runs off. Henry's left in the car. His
Speaker 2: wife's bleeding from a wound in her chest or a stomach,
Speaker 2: and you know, he's left not knowing what to do.
Speaker 2: So then he drives to the nearest hospital, which is
Speaker 2: just further up in nineteenth Avenue, and someone's estating in
Speaker 2: the middle of the park. Rushes to hospital. They can't
Speaker 2: do anything for that hospital, soil they take her to
Speaker 2: another hospital. Henry follows in his car. By the time
Speaker 2: he arrives at the other hospital, the doctors tell her
Speaker 2: tell him that his wife has died, and you know,
Speaker 2: he is a straw. I think he collapses. You know,
Speaker 2: it's traumatic event for him. So this is the kind
Speaker 2: of central crime. At the first half of the.
Speaker 6: Book, there was a witness, a father and son Jacob Gorfinkel,
Speaker 6: who's an attorney. What does he witness related to this attack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so he's kind of driving along and he witnesses
Speaker 2: two cars kind of speeding past him in close succession.
Speaker 2: So Henry's yellow car and then this other car following them,
Speaker 2: and then he sees and then and then Henry kind
Speaker 2: of comes a few minutes later, comes driving along, pulled
Speaker 2: up alongside him and says, help me. I need to
Speaker 2: help me get to the hospital. I don't know where
Speaker 2: the newest hospital is. So that's that's how it looks
Speaker 2: from this witnesses perspective, except that, and this is one
Speaker 2: of the first inconsistencies that been inter creaking to Henry's
Speaker 2: story that Henry describes the car differently to Gorfinkle. Right,
Speaker 2: So Henry says it's a particular type of car, and
Speaker 2: Golfre says it's a different type of car. And this
Speaker 2: might seem like a minor point, but obviously in those
Speaker 2: days the police lead on how solvers crime was looking
Speaker 2: for a red Dodge, but it wasn't a red Dodge.
Speaker 2: It was a dark blue Hudson car. So that's one
Speaker 2: of the first insonsistencies Henry's story and then over the
Speaker 2: following weeks, Henry's story about what happened on the night
Speaker 2: in question actually begins to unravel.
Speaker 6: What was the initial story about how much was stolen,
Speaker 6: and then the denomination of the bill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so Henry said that there were three one hundred
Speaker 2: dollar bills which were taken from him. This was the
Speaker 2: equivalent of about five thousand dollars in cash today, and
Speaker 2: that ends up being important because that's another way that
Speaker 2: the police try and track down who did this, because
Speaker 2: back then, one hundred dollars bills were pretty rare and
Speaker 2: a lot of people weren't earn in the minimum wage was,
Speaker 2: you know, twenty five cents an hour or something like that.
Speaker 2: So if you're walking around with one hundred dollar bill,
Speaker 2: then you very wealthy or there's something suspicious about it.
Speaker 2: So then what happens next is there's this kind of
Speaker 2: police hunt for these bandits. You know, Henry says there's
Speaker 2: kind of three men that were involved in this shooting
Speaker 2: because he saw them as the car was pulling up
Speaker 2: alongside him and forcing to the side of the road.
Speaker 2: He said he saw three men in this car. So
Speaker 2: there's this kind of statewide hunt for these men. And
Speaker 2: eventually they find these two brothers called Arthur and Walter Casta,
Speaker 2: and Arthur and Walter Caasta are all characters, just absolute villains,
Speaker 2: I guess, is any way you can put it, you know,
Speaker 2: sort of violent, prone to making terrible decisions. Their father
Speaker 2: was actually a police officer. Princes their police officer, so
Speaker 2: if they'd been murdered, and then after that, this family
Speaker 2: sort of went off the rails a little bit, and
Speaker 2: they're kind of in their twenties and thirties. Walter in
Speaker 2: particular is the I guess, loose cannon of the family.
Speaker 2: His kind of friends and family would say things like
Speaker 2: he makes bad decisions. His friends called him dizzy. He's
Speaker 2: like impulsed, he's like a child, he's prone to these
Speaker 2: violent outbursts. And then there's his younger brother, Arthur, who's
Speaker 2: kind of the more level headed of the two brothers.
Speaker 2: And they're actually like I think seven seven boys and
Speaker 2: also huge family. So that they get picked up basically
Speaker 2: at a garage in the mission, having tried to pay
Speaker 2: a bill player pay for a repair bill with one
Speaker 2: hundred dollars bill and the garage. Enna thinks this is suspicious,
Speaker 2: so he calls the police, and the police know the
Speaker 2: Caster brother's very well because they've been in trouble with
Speaker 2: the police before, so they bring them into questioning and
Speaker 2: then they bring Henry Wilkins in to identify the brothers
Speaker 2: in a police lineup. But Henry comes in and he
Speaker 2: says that he doesn't actually recognize either of the brothers
Speaker 2: as the men who robbed him and shot his wife.
Speaker 2: So the police let the to let the brothers go,
Speaker 2: that's the next step. And you know, Henry is still
Speaker 2: at this point kind of playing this innocent victim, this
Speaker 2: brief husband, this guy whose wife has been taken from
Speaker 2: him by this kind of random act of violence.
Speaker 6: Police do further investigation into the background and the marriage
Speaker 6: and what do they find.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so as the police are digging around this case,
Speaker 2: they find out that, you know, Henry was kind of
Speaker 2: portraying the marriage as happy, but actually they find out
Speaker 2: that it wasn't a happy marriage and that a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks before she died and I had actually filed
Speaker 2: for a divorce. They talked to and his friends and family,
Speaker 2: and they find out that Henry was sometimes violent, sometimes
Speaker 2: he would hit Anna, and that this supposedly happy marriage
Speaker 2: had actually been unraveling, and I had been drinking more
Speaker 2: and more and more. Henry had been allegedly seeing other women.
Speaker 2: So there was a sense that things were bad in
Speaker 2: the marriage even before this happened, and that perhaps this
Speaker 2: patriots agree and husband that Henry was putting forward was
Speaker 2: a bit of a front.
Speaker 6: The detectives also talked to a garage owner that has
Speaker 6: something very interesting to say when they ask them if
Speaker 6: the Caster brothers had ever rented a vehicle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So obviously the car was like a
Speaker 2: real red herring because the description that Henry gave led
Speaker 2: the police completely down the wrong path. They were looking
Speaker 2: for the wrong car essentially. But then when they asked
Speaker 2: this garage owner whether the brothers had ever rented a car, yeah, so, well,
Speaker 2: I should say that. The other thing that the police
Speaker 2: did was they showed Henry the Caster brother's car and
Speaker 2: they said, you know, was this the car that you
Speaker 2: saw at the scene of the crime, And obviously he
Speaker 2: said no, but because it wasn't. So what happened was
Speaker 2: that the Caster brothers had rented a car from this
Speaker 2: garage owner on the morning of Anna's death, and then
Speaker 2: they had returned it maybe an hour after she was shot,
Speaker 2: so you know that was and that car, the description
Speaker 2: of that car matched the car that the witness, Jacob
Speaker 2: gorfing Or, had seen speeding down nineteen seventy behind Henry's car.
Speaker 2: So you see how the police kind of pieces together.
Speaker 2: So they have this witness who sees a car following
Speaker 2: Henry's car, and then they have the character by renting
Speaker 2: a car that matched the description of that car. That's
Speaker 2: how I happened. And this car that they found, which
Speaker 2: they're pretty sure was the car that was following Henry,
Speaker 2: there's no resemblance to the car that Henry said he saw,
Speaker 2: so clearly Henry is maybe not telling the full truth
Speaker 2: about what happened on that night.
Speaker 6: Now, Detective Matheson and the chief O'Brian Walter is missing,
Speaker 6: but they look across the bay you right to Berkeley,
Speaker 6: and you right that there is a visionary police chief,
Speaker 6: a rookie carp and a teenage magician have been developing
Speaker 6: a machine with the power the sort of truth from
Speaker 6: fiction tell us about August Vallmer and Berkeley and what
Speaker 6: happens and how these three characters come to be together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so clearly, you know the piece button was faced
Speaker 2: with this guy, Henry Wilkins, who they think is lying,
Speaker 2: and luckily for them, or you know, unluckily considering what
Speaker 2: would go on to happen, some people, some police officers
Speaker 2: across the bay, and Berkeley had just invented the light detector.
Speaker 2: So the story of that is Berkeley was sort of
Speaker 2: a hub for scientific policing. So the chief of police
Speaker 2: in Berkeley was this guy called August Volmer, who's considered
Speaker 2: he's considered the father of modern policing. He was one
Speaker 2: of the first people to bring in forensics. He was
Speaker 2: one of the first people to bring in radios and
Speaker 2: signaling system for police officers. He started using fingerprints and
Speaker 2: photo libraries and things like that to kind of catch criminals.
Speaker 2: The other thing he did was he started hiring university graduates,
Speaker 2: college graduates as police officers. So up until nineteen twenties,
Speaker 2: most peace officers were kind of uneducated, quite British people,
Speaker 2: i suppose, and they used their fists and their clubs
Speaker 2: to get information out of suspects. And Farmer thought that
Speaker 2: this was a bit distasteful, and he thought that actually
Speaker 2: hiring college graduates would lead to a more humane form
Speaker 2: of policing. One more a better route towards justice. He
Speaker 2: started hiring all of these university graduates and then the
Speaker 2: player was nicknamed the college cops. And one of Valmer's
Speaker 2: college coups was a guy called John Larson. And John
Speaker 2: Lson was older than some of the other college croups.
Speaker 2: He was already in late twenties. But he was different
Speaker 2: because he's the background in physiology. So he'd done a
Speaker 2: PhD in physiology and he wanted to become a criminologist.
Speaker 2: He wanted to use physiology to help solve crimes, so
Speaker 2: he went to Berkeley to basically get some real well
Speaker 2: policing experience before he then used that accommodation of this
Speaker 2: physiology research to become a criminologist. And Larson was like
Speaker 2: a terrible cop. He was constantly bumbling, getting in fights
Speaker 2: with his colleagues, crashing cars, things like that. It was
Speaker 2: a very good scientist. And in nineteen twenty two, so
Speaker 2: the year before Anna Wilkins was shot, Vroma read a
Speaker 2: research paper by a guy called William Moulton Marston who
Speaker 2: would go on to be the creator of Wonder Woman,
Speaker 2: but he's also well known for coming up with this
Speaker 2: essential insight. Right, So Marsden realized or discovered that when
Speaker 2: he measured people's blood pressure as they told false stories,
Speaker 2: that blood pressure would go up when they were lying.
Speaker 2: So this is the kind of essential insight that then
Speaker 2: feeds into the polygraph machine. So Marston noticed that there
Speaker 2: was a link between blood pressure and people telling lies,
Speaker 2: essentially what he thought there was. So Roma reads this
Speaker 2: research them and he thinks, if only we could find
Speaker 2: a way to formalize that, to make that usable in
Speaker 2: piece investigations, to make it objective rather than subjective. So
Speaker 2: he calls John Larson into his office one day and
Speaker 2: he says, John, could you turn this into a machine
Speaker 2: that we can use to, you know, kind of measure
Speaker 2: and while we're interrogating suspects. So, you know, John Marson
Speaker 2: goes away and he cobbles together a bunch of equipment
Speaker 2: from the lab at the University of Berkeley, like a
Speaker 2: blood pressure monitor, a sort of a scrolling piece of paper,
Speaker 2: and a pen that kind of scratches away lines depending
Speaker 2: on whether someone's blood pressure goes up and goes down.
Speaker 2: And you'll recognize what I'm describing as essentially a polygraph machine.
Speaker 2: A lie detector is not dissimilar to how it looks today.
Speaker 2: So this is in nineteen twenty two, and then a
Speaker 2: few months later they get a chance to kind of
Speaker 2: try out this machine on a real case. There's a
Speaker 2: series of best women's dorm at the University of Berkeley,
Speaker 2: and Larson uses the lie detective machine. The cardio neuropsychograph
Speaker 2: is what he was calling it back then, which isn't
Speaker 2: a very catchy name, but he uses that to basically
Speaker 2: investigate this case of these stuffs at this dorm, and
Speaker 2: then beyond after that, it gets used in a number
Speaker 2: of other kind of cases. That gets used in the
Speaker 2: murder trial O case, a guy called William high Tower
Speaker 2: who keeps murdering a priest, and it gets more and
Speaker 2: more popular over the following year. So by the time
Speaker 2: the Wilkins case comes around, the light of sector is
Speaker 2: sort of getting wider recognition in the press, and you know,
Speaker 2: is generally thought of in kind of positive terms. So
Speaker 2: those are the two kind of creators I guess of
Speaker 2: the detector. The other person who's important in the story
Speaker 2: is a guy called Leonard Keeler. So Keiler was about
Speaker 2: sixteen at the time that last and wasn't menting the
Speaker 2: light detectors. He was a high school student, quite a
Speaker 2: sickly boy. He'd been off school for a while with
Speaker 2: various illnesses. And he was a family friend of August Formers.
Speaker 2: So Volmer was friendly with Charles Keeler, who was Lend
Speaker 2: Keiler's father. He knew that Keiller was sort of kicking
Speaker 2: his heels at home, so one day he said, oh,
Speaker 2: why don't you come into the police department and you know,
Speaker 2: I'll show you show you around. So, you know, Keiler
Speaker 2: comes into the police department one day, just like the kids.
Speaker 2: You know, he's quite a you know, interesting guy. He's
Speaker 2: into like animals. He keeps rattlesnakes at home. He like
Speaker 2: does slighted hand magic and things like that. But anyway,
Speaker 2: at the moment Keiler sees Last and with the polygraph machine,
Speaker 2: he's like completely fascinated by this machine, and he becomes
Speaker 2: a Larsen's kind of protege. He comes as a system.
Speaker 2: He helps Last and take the machine around California doing
Speaker 2: tests on people and things like that. So those are
Speaker 2: the three main characters. And you know, so this is
Speaker 2: in kind of the spring of nineteen twenty two. So
Speaker 2: behind the Wilkens case, rolls around a year later. These
Speaker 2: three characters have kind of honed the light detector and
Speaker 2: they think they aren't to a good thing. It's been
Speaker 2: using a couple of moder cases and lots of like
Speaker 2: t thefts and things like that, and the Wilkins case
Speaker 2: is like another kind of big step for them.
Speaker 6: What about the actual polygraph examination? Who conducts it? As
Speaker 6: we know it? There are control questions like today we
Speaker 6: know it that there are some kind of control questions.
Speaker 6: How did they conduct this? How long did it take?
Speaker 6: You describe in the book what happened and the results
Speaker 6: that they announced, and then also there I would say
Speaker 6: hesitancy later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right. So light of Texas tests are not
Speaker 2: the same as they are shown on TV or in movies.
Speaker 2: Often they take a lot longer, they're a lot more boring.
Speaker 2: The protocol that last and kind of instigated was that
Speaker 2: you would ask a series of yes and no questions,
Speaker 2: starting with control questions like is your name Henry, and
Speaker 2: then moving on to target questions like you know, did
Speaker 2: you shoot your wife? And the test as it was designed,
Speaker 2: required you to wait a minute between each question to
Speaker 2: allow someone's body to react to the question, and then
Speaker 2: allow it to come back to a baseline for you
Speaker 2: then ask the next question question. And the theory is
Speaker 2: that by comparing the responses to the control questions to
Speaker 2: the responses to the kind of target questions, you can
Speaker 2: determine whether someone's lying, because if they're lying, there'll be
Speaker 2: the theories that they're pulsed and the blood pressure will
Speaker 2: go up if they're herd. The truth, the theory is
Speaker 2: that it won't. That's one of the one of the
Speaker 2: points I try and make in the book is that,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't think we can necessarily take that
Speaker 2: for granted, which which means the polygraph is slightly flawed.
Speaker 2: But yes, so John Larson kind of gets the very
Speaker 2: across the bay to San Francisco and he does the
Speaker 2: slight test on on Henry Wilkins. And you know, at
Speaker 2: this time, the Caster brothers sort of in the wind right.
Speaker 2: They've been released and they've basically just disappeared from the city,
Speaker 2: and Henry is being seen with much more suspicion by
Speaker 2: the press and by the police. But actually he takes
Speaker 2: the liab De text to test and he passes the
Speaker 2: lad De tech to test. So according to this machine
Speaker 2: that's been invented. Henry is innocent, he had nothing to
Speaker 2: do with his wife's death, and he's just been sort
Speaker 2: of wrongly implicated. He is the victim of kind of
Speaker 2: random violence. And so again the police are kind of
Speaker 2: forced to just let him go. So Henry is brought
Speaker 2: in to do the slide of text test, he passes
Speaker 2: the tex to test, and then he's let go. So
Speaker 2: then the police are kind of back to square one
Speaker 2: right there. Initial suspects, the Caster Brothers were released because
Speaker 2: Henry said he didn't recognize them, and then Henry was
Speaker 2: brought back in when they realized that actually he didn't
Speaker 2: know the Caster brothers. That's the other thing, that important
Speaker 2: thing that had happened. So it had transpired in the
Speaker 2: intervening weeks that Henry had actually worked with water Casta
Speaker 2: and then was acquainted with the people that the police
Speaker 2: think shot his wife, which is again is like a
Speaker 2: real red flag. But they bring in then he passes
Speaker 2: the live detective test, so they let him go.
Speaker 6: Larson, even at this time, you write, is not in
Speaker 6: agreement with the things that Keeler bring into the equation.
Speaker 6: What are some of the things that they disagree with?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I guess the way you can characterize this
Speaker 2: is that Larson is sort of the kind of rational, scientific, careful,
Speaker 2: cautious part of this. So he invents the machine, but
Speaker 2: he sees it as a scientific instrument, realizes that it
Speaker 2: needs to be validated and a lot of research work
Speaker 2: still needs to be done before it should be rolled
Speaker 2: out beyond the very few cases that he is personally
Speaker 2: involved in. Keiler was in the book. I described him
Speaker 2: as kind of a showman. He's much more interested in
Speaker 2: using this machine to solve crimes, you know, chase down criminals,
Speaker 2: crack cases, do all these kind of dramatic, heroic things.
Speaker 2: And sometimes because Keuiler is not a scientist, he sort
Speaker 2: of discards the careful, cautious scientific method that Larson would
Speaker 2: prefer that he use. So this is the essential kind
Speaker 2: of difference between these two men. And in the years
Speaker 2: that follow, these two men have spectacular fallings out their
Speaker 2: different attitudes to the polygraph machine. And actually John Larson
Speaker 2: really ends up hating Keiler by the end of the book.
Speaker 2: You know, he really really kind of despises him. He
Speaker 2: thinks that Keela has turned this machine that he invented
Speaker 2: the last and invented into sort of Frankenstein's monster, right,
Speaker 2: Keeler is largely responsible for the spread of the polygroch
Speaker 2: around the world, but Larson kind of never really forgives
Speaker 2: them for it.
Speaker 6: Let's get back to this incredible scene that you have
Speaker 6: with this further investigation into Henry Wilkins by the district
Speaker 6: Attorney Brady, and Brady has this very very creative plan
Speaker 6: to sort of disrupt Arthur and get it an elicit
Speaker 6: a confession. Tell us about this incredible scene.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a fascinating, fascinating thing that I discovered.
Speaker 2: So basically eventually they managed to find Arthur Castor and
Speaker 2: arrest him. This is kind of bring him back to
Speaker 2: San Francisco and that he still kind of says, Oh,
Speaker 2: I've got nothing to do with this Ana Will and shooting.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm innocent, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But he's sitting in a jail cell and they're trying
Speaker 2: to come up with ways to get him to talk.
Speaker 2: So arthurcass This is like mid June twenty twenty three
Speaker 2: by this point, and Arthurcaster is kind of sitting in
Speaker 2: this jai jail cell at this point, and he hears
Speaker 2: a young kid, kind of like a teenager, I guess,
Speaker 2: being brought in and he talks to him briefly, and
Speaker 2: the kids says, you know, I'm being sent down for
Speaker 2: the Anna Wilkins murder and I didn't do it. I'm innocent.
Speaker 2: I'm innocent, and Arthur is like, okay. And then what
Speaker 2: happens is that night they put this kid in the
Speaker 2: cell next to him, next to Arthur, and all night
Speaker 2: you can hear this kid moaning and crying and wailing.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm gonna they're going to hang me. You know,
Speaker 2: I'm innocent, I didn't do it, et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 2: et cetera. And this goes on for a couple of
Speaker 2: nights and then eventually Arthur's conscience starts to weigh on him.
Speaker 2: You know, his mother comes in and his mother tells him, oh,
Speaker 2: you know, you should do what's right. And so, you know,
Speaker 2: a couple of days later, Arthur confesses. He says, you know,
Speaker 2: we were involved in the shooting and it was Henry
Speaker 2: Wilkins that paid us to kill his wife. And this
Speaker 2: is kind of a bombed our moment in the whole case,
Speaker 2: and actually happened because the kid that they brought in
Speaker 2: to cry and whale and moan in the cell next
Speaker 2: to Arthur's cell was an actor. He was not actually
Speaker 2: a real suspect at all. They brought him in with
Speaker 2: the beress purpose of kind of tricking Arthur into confessing,
Speaker 2: and it worked. And it also points the finger straight
Speaker 2: back at Henry Wilkins, which means two things. Really, It
Speaker 2: means that the police had released not only Walter and Archicasta,
Speaker 2: who ended up being implicated, but they'd also released tend
Speaker 2: Me on the basis of a test on the so
Speaker 2: called light attective machine. And the reason that I kind
Speaker 2: of picked this case for this book about the history
Speaker 2: of the polygraph machine is that it was one of
Speaker 2: the first kind of high profile failures of this machine,
Speaker 2: the first of many.
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Speaker 6: to hire. Now, we talked about this, this dramatic failure,
Speaker 6: at least that John Larson felt it was a dramatic
Speaker 6: failure of this device that he had put his considerable
Speaker 6: part of his life into. But how did August Volmer
Speaker 6: react and how did Keeler respond? And what was the
Speaker 6: next chapter in the light Detector?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's an interesting question. So they were kind of
Speaker 2: still pretty positive about the machine. Keeler in particular was
Speaker 2: kind of not that bust about the Wilkins case and
Speaker 2: felt that they shouldn't stop rolling out the machine.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 2: So by this point, you know, they're kind of plowing
Speaker 2: ahead with more and more cases last and is getting
Speaker 2: increasingly worried, I guess, or reluctant to use the detectors
Speaker 2: that it's been proven to work. But here's kind of
Speaker 2: charging ahead. By this point, Wolmar and Keyler are both
Speaker 2: in LA where they're kind of working together. They're using
Speaker 2: the light detection on various cases. And yeah, so it
Speaker 2: doesn't really change the momentum of things. I suppose we.
Speaker 6: Didn't mention too this incredible trial that looks like a
Speaker 6: slam dunk what happens at that trial and retrail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so the trial is kind of long and twisting,
Speaker 2: and it's got some incredible characters in it. Frank Murphy,
Speaker 2: who's Henry Wilkins's attorney, is this kind of bullish, kind
Speaker 2: of belligerent kind of guy, And there's lots of kind
Speaker 2: of drama twists and turns and drama and all sorts
Speaker 2: of stuff going on. In the trial. One of the
Speaker 2: major revelations to come out of the trial is that
Speaker 2: Henry has been having an affair with his wife's sister.
Speaker 2: So that's one of the kind of main things that
Speaker 2: comes out during the kind of trial and the pre
Speaker 2: trial and as it transpires, and his sister came over
Speaker 2: from Germany a few months before Anna died and basically
Speaker 2: was been struck up an affair with Henry Wilkins essentially,
Speaker 2: so yeah, more and more kind of fingers seem to
Speaker 2: be pointing at Henry. But the first trial, it's kind
Speaker 2: of a hung jury, so that they didn't come to
Speaker 2: an agreement in the first trial. And basically what happened
Speaker 2: is that the prosecution calls, you know, after Cast and
Speaker 2: water Caster, who then you obviously go out and say
Speaker 2: that they were paid by Henry to shoot Anna, but
Speaker 2: no one really believes them. The jury kind of think, okay, well,
Speaker 2: on the one hand, you've got this weaving husband who, yes,
Speaker 2: maybe was having an affair, but on the other hand,
Speaker 2: you've got these two renowned crooks with long criminal records. Actually,
Speaker 2: what ends up happening is that they don't really believe
Speaker 2: anyone in the case, right, They don't believe either Henry
Speaker 2: or the Caster brothers, but so there's no kind of
Speaker 2: unanimous verdict, and actually it goes it goes to a
Speaker 2: retrail and the retail for the very similar pattern, you know,
Speaker 2: same kind of witnesses, same kind of attempts to malign
Speaker 2: the characters of various people, saying you know, that kind
Speaker 2: of undan tactics used by the attorneys. At one point,
Speaker 2: the attorney's kind of almost come to blows, so the
Speaker 2: opposing attorneys are literally standing outside of the courthouse squaring
Speaker 2: up against each other, and they have to be separated
Speaker 2: by the police. But by the end of that second trial,
Speaker 2: Henry is found innocent, so actually no one goes to
Speaker 2: jail for this crime. Then the other thing we should
Speaker 2: talk about, of course, is the shootout. So they managed
Speaker 2: to catch Arfter castera kind of relatively early on, but
Speaker 2: Walter Caster still kind of disappears. So after the Custom
Speaker 2: brothers were initially released, they kind of flee north. So
Speaker 2: they get a car and they drive up up the
Speaker 2: west coast towards Eureka, through the kind of old gold
Speaker 2: mining country in the Redwoods, and eventually they pitch up,
Speaker 2: you know, somewhere somewhere on up there, and Arthur is
Speaker 2: brought back to San Francisco, but Walter is still kind
Speaker 2: of on the lamb. But at some point Walter sneaks
Speaker 2: back to San Francisco and the police are watching him,
Speaker 2: and then they get a tip about where he is
Speaker 2: one day, so they send kind of three police officers
Speaker 2: down to go and get him when he's staying at
Speaker 2: his mother's house and they send three places officers to
Speaker 2: go and kind of arrest him and bring him back
Speaker 2: so that he can he can be tried in this
Speaker 2: Henry Wilkins case. And essentially what happens is that as
Speaker 2: the police knock on the door and they enter, so
Speaker 2: Water's mother answers the door, the police barge in and
Speaker 2: then the shooting start. Water shoots one of the police
Speaker 2: officers in the head in just above the eye. He
Speaker 2: shoots another one in the chest, He shoots his girlfriend
Speaker 2: who he suspects of having led the police to him,
Speaker 2: and then he turns with the gun on himself. And
Speaker 2: there's space of about two minutes, there is massive bloodshed
Speaker 2: at this house San Francisco. One of the police officers dies,
Speaker 2: the other one is okay. Eventually that has to have
Speaker 2: eye surgery, and then obviously Waters's girlfriend and Water both
Speaker 2: both passed away as well. And for John Larson, this
Speaker 2: is like a really like project event because he's kind
Speaker 2: of thinking, Oh, if my machine had worked properly, this
Speaker 2: would never have happened, right, Or if the machine had
Speaker 2: not existed, maybe Henry would have been arrested, and you know,
Speaker 2: they wouldn't have had to track Water down in this way.
Speaker 2: So in his mind it's like the machine failed, and
Speaker 2: because the machine failed, all these people are now dead.
Speaker 2: So it's a really dramatic kind of tourn of events.
Speaker 6: Tell us about the landmark case that said a precedent
Speaker 6: involving an Alfonso Fry.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is the Fry case. So I mentioned
Speaker 2: William Marston at the top as the guy who kind
Speaker 2: of came up with this concept of light detectors and
Speaker 2: blood pressure being linked. And Marston was really keen for
Speaker 2: the lie detection to be accepted in court, and he
Speaker 2: tried to use this test case of this. This guy
Speaker 2: called James Arfonder Fryer. He was a First World War
Speaker 2: there twenty five year old who had been accused of
Speaker 2: murdering a prominent black doctor in Washington and Marston wanted
Speaker 2: to use this case as a kind of test case
Speaker 2: for getting a lie detection accepted in court, but the
Speaker 2: judge was not convinced. He basically said something like, when
Speaker 2: this technology is broadly accepted by experts in the field,
Speaker 2: then it will be sufficiently developed to be to be
Speaker 2: usable in the court of law. But it hasn't reached
Speaker 2: that case yet. And this standard of qualification, which was
Speaker 2: known as the Fries standard, kind of became the fact
Speaker 2: a benchmark which new technologies have to reach in order
Speaker 2: to be usable in court. You know, whether that's fingerprinting,
Speaker 2: blood battery analysis, all these kind of new technologies that
Speaker 2: people want to use as evidence have to the standard
Speaker 2: where they're kind of broadly accepted by experts in the field.
Speaker 2: And the polygraph didn't reach that standard. And actually the
Speaker 2: polygraph has never reached our standard, which is why it's
Speaker 2: not usable in court. Federal court in the US.
Speaker 6: Tell us about Max Dent and how he figures into
Speaker 6: this story.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so about halfway through the book, we jumped forward
Speaker 2: in time. So after the conclusion of the Henry Wilkins case,
Speaker 2: Henry is Henry is released. He carries on with life.
Speaker 2: He moves away from somewhere city where his name is
Speaker 2: sort of mud essentially, and the lie detector continues to
Speaker 2: One thing I should say before we go on to
Speaker 2: Max Dent is that John Larson's kind of desperate to
Speaker 2: find Henry guilty to prove that he was guilty. So
Speaker 2: after Henry gets released, John Larson kind of befriends Henry
Speaker 2: Wilkins and he convinces him to take another lie detected test,
Speaker 2: which Henry passes again, and then he also convinces him
Speaker 2: to do a truth theorem, which again Henry kind of passes.
Speaker 2: It still shows up that he telling the truth. John
Speaker 2: Larson remains convinced that Henry's innocent, but with no evigenc
Speaker 2: he sort of has to let it go. But he
Speaker 2: never really stops thinking about that case. But anyway, so yes,
Speaker 2: after the conclusion of the Henry Wilkins case, Larson becomes
Speaker 2: increasingly sort of reluctant to spread the polygraph any further
Speaker 2: until he's done the kind of scientific validation work. Leonard
Speaker 2: Keeler becomes more and more hard working in his efforts
Speaker 2: to sell it to market, to commercialize it, to spread
Speaker 2: it to the world. So twelve years later, This is
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five now, so they have all relocated independently
Speaker 2: to shut Chicago, so bombers in Chicago teaching courses. Out
Speaker 2: of college, Larson has been bouncing around various jobs. One
Speaker 2: of the problems with Johnlarson is he's incredibly stubborn and
Speaker 2: sort of very I guess belligerent and can't keep a
Speaker 2: job because he constantly gets in fights for the superiors
Speaker 2: over trivial matters. So, you know, by this point, it's
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty five, and then the Keiller's in Chicago's work.
Speaker 2: He's working at a crime lab kind of doing all
Speaker 2: this cool stuff, like you know, ballistics and tracking down gangsters.
Speaker 2: It's the capone era, so Chicago is the kind of
Speaker 2: cap sort of crime in the US. The Keelers, they're
Speaker 2: sort of, you know, using his skills to kind of
Speaker 2: catch criminals. So yeah, in nineteen thirty five, and a
Speaker 2: guy called Max Dent has popped out to buy cigarettes
Speaker 2: in the West Side of Chicago. He's a Jewish, is
Speaker 2: a very Jewish area that they're kind of immigrants from
Speaker 2: Eastern Europe, lives with his parents. He's popped out to
Speaker 2: buy cigarettes and he's walking back from the shop back
Speaker 2: to home when someone runs out of an alleyway and
Speaker 2: basically guns him down, and the suspect has kind of
Speaker 2: quickly identified as a guy called Joe Rappaport, And the
Speaker 2: theory is that basically Max Dent is a prolific police informant.
Speaker 2: He has been snitching on people all over Chicago, and
Speaker 2: he essentially like deals drugs and then like tells the
Speaker 2: police that he's sold so and so drugs, So they
Speaker 2: then go and arrest that person. And the theory is
Speaker 2: that Joe Rappaport is one of the people who one
Speaker 2: of the few people who Max Dent has been formed
Speaker 2: on who's not already in prison, and therefore he's one
Speaker 2: of the few people with both the means and the
Speaker 2: motive to have shot him. So Rappaport is kind of
Speaker 2: quickly arrested and he becomes the sort of next kind
Speaker 2: of big This becomes the next big case that that
Speaker 2: I look at in the book because the light detect
Speaker 2: becomes entwined in this case.
Speaker 6: Later on in proceedings tell us about the case. Well
Speaker 6: Heeler is in is in Juliet prison. It add so
Speaker 6: much controversy to the light detector.
Speaker 2: We last and Larson's and Julie at prison. Yes, so
Speaker 2: it's it's a really famous case. It's a Leopold and
Speaker 2: Load case, which you might have heard of before. Theres
Speaker 2: two young men in the kind of nineteen twenties, I think,
Speaker 2: or nineteen ten's maybe who basically kidnap and murder this
Speaker 2: kid because they want to prove they can get away
Speaker 2: with the perfect crime. And at this point it's kind
Speaker 2: of nineteen thirty six and Richard Lobe is at Juliet
Speaker 2: Penitentiary where John Larson is working as kind of the
Speaker 2: prison sort of psychiatrist, and the Larston comes out of
Speaker 2: his office one day and he finds Load completely naked,
Speaker 2: dripping wet, and carvered in blood. He's had his throat
Speaker 2: slashed basically, and Larson had to like stop up quite
Speaker 2: close relationship with Lobbit in the previous months. And essentially
Speaker 2: what happens is that that Larson is told not to
Speaker 2: speak to the press about what's happened, that the kind
Speaker 2: of people that run the prison don't want this case
Speaker 2: getting out into the papers, but Larson refuses to adhits
Speaker 2: those rules. So this murder of Richard Lowbiiner the prisoner
Speaker 2: ends up costing Larson his job and Jolia. It's an
Speaker 2: interesting kind of side story here that kind of ties
Speaker 2: Larsen into the political machinery at the time, which is
Speaker 2: kind of fascinating.
Speaker 6: You also write about a case that really helps the
Speaker 6: lie detector. There is a movie at one time called
Speaker 6: The Canary Murder Case, but this is the real Canary
Speaker 6: murder case. It was dubbed tell us about this murder
Speaker 6: case involving the canary.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so this is kind of fascinating. This is one
Speaker 2: of the of the cases where and it all kind
Speaker 2: of comes together at the end. But this is one
Speaker 2: of the cases that really popularized the light detector in
Speaker 2: Chicago and led to it being needed in their appport case. Soically,
Speaker 2: there was a judge in Chicago called Henry Horner who
Speaker 2: was investigating police of corruption and there was a case
Speaker 2: of a woman who had died and the police regarding
Speaker 2: her house and one of her She ran a cafe
Speaker 2: called it, I think, the Singing Bird Cafe, and one
Speaker 2: of the kind of star attractions to the cafe was
Speaker 2: this this yellow canary. He would sing and people loved it. Anyway,
Speaker 2: the police regarding this house and the canary disappeared, and
Speaker 2: there had been been a spate of kind of thefts
Speaker 2: from crime scenes and it was a very corrupt era
Speaker 2: in policing. So immediately Horner was like, Okay, well, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to stand for this. I'm going to get
Speaker 2: to the bottom of who was stolen this stolen this canary.
Speaker 2: And they basically brought in Lenko and Filmer to do
Speaker 2: li de text tests on all the police officers involved,
Speaker 2: and they were able to get a confession from one
Speaker 2: of the officers that he had stolen the canary and
Speaker 2: then swapped out for another one essentially, and so the
Speaker 2: lightestext has successfully solved this case, and that stuck with Horner,
Speaker 2: and basically what happens is Horner Horner then goes on
Speaker 2: to become the governor of Illinois. Eventually to this judge
Speaker 2: who is really close to Kila. He starts to have
Speaker 2: a really close friendentship with learn the China actually ends
Speaker 2: up administering Quila's wedding, ends up becoming the governor of Illinois.
Speaker 2: But by the time the Jai Rapp book pace is
Speaker 2: kind of going to the courts, one who is now
Speaker 2: the governor over Illinois and that ends up being important
Speaker 2: because or shooting Max Dent has been given the death penalty, that.
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Speaker 6: Now you talk about Joseph Rappaport and his troubles, but
Speaker 6: he has a sister named Roe. Tell us about his
Speaker 6: legal troubles and Judge Horner or the former Judge Horner
Speaker 6: and Rose.
Speaker 2: Yes, so that's right. So Rapport is on death row
Speaker 2: in Chicago and the County Penitentiary, and his sister is
Speaker 2: distraught and she as she did the previous time Rapport
Speaker 2: got arrested. She writes hundreds of letters to anyone she
Speaker 2: can to try and get the sentence commuted, to get
Speaker 2: it overturned. So she bombards Henry Horner the government of
Speaker 2: Illinois with please for clemency. She door stops them at
Speaker 2: the station she made plience to curse him, and you know,
Speaker 2: all this stuff when if he doesn't let her brother live, essentially,
Speaker 2: and what happens is that Joy Rapport's death sentence keeps
Speaker 2: getting commuted, so it keeps getting delayed, not commuted, so
Speaker 2: he keeps getting keeps getting delayed. And I think it
Speaker 2: happens like three or four times. He's, you know, due
Speaker 2: to go to the electric chair, and something happens at
Speaker 2: the last minute, some legal route, and actually it gets
Speaker 2: pushed back, you know, it gets delayed for legal res
Speaker 2: since it gets delayed for Jewish holidays, and eventually Rose
Speaker 2: Wrapperport manages to convince Henry Horner to cancel the execution.
Speaker 2: It's so good if Joe Rapport can pass a lighter
Speaker 2: text test. And that's where then the Keeler comes in.
Speaker 2: So Horner obviously knows Keiler and that's why he knows
Speaker 2: about the lighter texted test. So he calls killer up
Speaker 2: and he said, can you go and do the slider
Speaker 2: detective test on this death row in mate? And that's
Speaker 2: what kind of forms the kind of closing segment of
Speaker 2: the book. Is this really dramatic lighter text light detected
Speaker 2: to test in the prison on the guy who's due
Speaker 2: to be executed that night.
Speaker 6: It's fascinating to you, right though, that the precedent had
Speaker 6: already been set that it couldn't be used in court.
Speaker 6: But what was the sort of loophole that they saw
Speaker 6: it as?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was. It was sort of a last roll
Speaker 2: of the dice, I guess, in a similar way to
Speaker 2: Stephen Avery using a brain fingerprinting test to try and
Speaker 2: clear his name. Joe Rapport was desperate enough to try anything.
Speaker 2: But the problem is that, like a death row style
Speaker 2: is not an appropriate place to conduct this kind of test, right,
Speaker 2: you know, you can't how can you be if you
Speaker 2: know that you're going to be executed, If this test,
Speaker 2: you know, goes the wrong way for you, what would
Speaker 2: your blood pressure be?
Speaker 5: Like?
Speaker 2: You know, how can that be a fair test? You know?
Speaker 2: The lights in the cell were literally flickering because they
Speaker 2: were test in the electric chair in the next room
Speaker 2: while Jo Rapport was doing this test. So it's a
Speaker 2: kind of classic example of this supposedly scientific test being
Speaker 2: used in a way that was not scientific at all,
Speaker 2: and that John Marson would have been appalled by and
Speaker 2: was appalled by when he found out that happened. So essentially,
Speaker 2: report fails the light tex test that's conducted by Keiler
Speaker 2: and is marched from the cell to the electric chair
Speaker 2: and is executed, and becomes the kind of first person
Speaker 2: to be executed as a result of failing a lighter
Speaker 2: text tests.
Speaker 6: You're right about the relationship. We have talked about it
Speaker 6: a little bit, but more so what Larson does in
Speaker 6: the relationship with Keeler and the relationship between Keeler and
Speaker 6: Larson and Volmer. Tell us about the relationship between all
Speaker 6: three of these creators of this supposed light detector.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Essentially, over the course of you know, from from
Speaker 2: about nineteen twenty five onwards, and accelerated by things like
Speaker 2: the Max Dent and Je Rappert case, it begins to
Speaker 2: disintegrate by you know, by the early thirties, Keiler and
Speaker 2: Arson are no longer and speaking terms like Larson writes
Speaker 2: these kind of bitter like ritual letters to Volma complaining
Speaker 2: about Keila, and supposed like Keiler writes back to Volmar
Speaker 2: kind of complaining about Larson and Larst and bad mouse
Speaker 2: Quilla are all around town, and Keiler complains about you know,
Speaker 2: last and bad mouthing him and all this kind of stuff.
Speaker 2: And eventually, eventually what happens is that Volmer, both Wilma
Speaker 2: and Keila cut tied with Larson. You know, Wolmer kind
Speaker 2: of decides that actually does not worth the Greek trying
Speaker 2: to continue to maintain a relationship with John Larson to
Speaker 2: John Wilson and sort of bitter and alone kind of
Speaker 2: cotecting newspaper clippings of Rider sector stories, you know, scanning
Speaker 2: the press for bad news stories about Keela that will
Speaker 2: reflect badly on Keila his former protgee. And yeah, their
Speaker 2: relationships sort of disintegrates, and then Keida has quite a
Speaker 2: sad story as well. Tequila Quila's wife leaves. He kind
Speaker 2: of descends into alcoholism, who basically does nothing but drink.
Speaker 2: His business fail, he eats it set a business kind
Speaker 2: of saying like the text test that fails, and he
Speaker 2: dies really really young. Of essentially of liver disease because
Speaker 2: because of the amount of he's drinking.
Speaker 6: You write about that the light detector lives on, and
Speaker 6: you talk about work in the United Kingdom using the machine,
Speaker 6: tell us about where it does still continue in its use,
Speaker 6: and then tell us about again Larsen's conclusions after all
Speaker 6: of these years being involved in light detection.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's use very widely today. So there's about
Speaker 2: three million test year in the United States. It's being
Speaker 2: used in the UK more and more rather than less
Speaker 2: and less, which is sort of slightly alarming. So it's
Speaker 2: being used to do screening tests on suspected terrorists and
Speaker 2: decide whether people are eligible for parole. So it's used
Speaker 2: quite broadly. And then the other thing that's that I
Speaker 2: think is that new forms of light detection are being
Speaker 2: invented that kind of still have the same flaws as
Speaker 2: the polygraph. So yeah, by the end of his life,
Speaker 2: John Larson was pretty despondent, and he kind of writes
Speaker 2: something like, you know, this machine that he thought would
Speaker 2: fix the criminal justice system, you know, be a force
Speaker 2: figure that actually ended up being a Frankenstein's monster. He
Speaker 2: regrets ever having vented it, and personally game to that
Speaker 2: as lemon.
Speaker 6: Keeler August Vahmer. You write initially his assent into legendary
Speaker 6: status as this modern a person that was the fixture
Speaker 6: of modern policing. But he has his own problems with
Speaker 6: his reputation and credibility as time goes on, doesn't he.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, I think during his life Barmer was kind
Speaker 2: of very well respected. And he dies, actually he takes
Speaker 2: his own life because of the kind of pain of
Speaker 2: living with various ailments that began to afflict him as
Speaker 2: he gets older, to shoot himself in his garden. And
Speaker 2: I think during his life he was kind of considered
Speaker 2: this revolutionary father of modern policing. I think it's only
Speaker 2: in the last maybe ten fifteen years we begin to
Speaker 2: reassess that perspective. I think in light of some of
Speaker 2: the issues around policing at the moment, this kind of
Speaker 2: very like I guess the technification of placing has maybe
Speaker 2: had some bad impacts that probably can be traced back
Speaker 2: to Boma. So I think his heart was in the
Speaker 2: right place. You know, he wanted to make placing more humane,
Speaker 2: but I think in bringing in in bringing in certain
Speaker 2: technologies that ended up not being good things to use.
Speaker 2: He may be stowed the seed to some of the
Speaker 2: problems that we see today, the over miltarization of police
Speaker 2: and things like that.
Speaker 6: You're right that the National Registry of Exonerations lists more
Speaker 6: than two hundred people wrongfully imprisoned after failed polygraph tests.
Speaker 6: And you say, those are just the ones who's convictions
Speaker 6: were overturned. The real numbers are potentially much higher.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is the underlying point of the book, right,
Speaker 2: that the largest sector tests don't work right, And the
Speaker 2: fascinating thing is that we still use them and they're
Speaker 2: still kind of seen as a technology that should be
Speaker 2: is to try and catch criminals. And look, undoubtedly these machines,
Speaker 2: these machines have have helped to put people buy in
Speaker 2: barsuse people buy in bars. But the problem is that
Speaker 2: they also perpetos kind of horrendous mischaracters of justice. And
Speaker 2: I guess the lesson from the two main cases that
Speaker 2: I faced on the Henry Wilkin's case and the GI
Speaker 2: rapport cases that these machines are not infallible. You know,
Speaker 2: it's my view that in the Henry Wilkins's case, the
Speaker 2: light tec to test got it wrong, right, it wrongly
Speaker 2: said Henry was innocent of cousan's killer's wife, and he
Speaker 2: was probably guilty. As a result of the test getting
Speaker 2: it wrong, several more people died. You didn't need to die.
Speaker 2: And then the Gi Wrappport case. I think Joe Rappert
Speaker 2: probably was guilty. But the decision about whether to execute
Speaker 2: someone should never have been made by a flawed machine.
Speaker 2: And there's all sorts of research over many decades basically
Speaker 2: proving of the polygraph is not accurate. Estimates of his
Speaker 2: accuracy range from, you know, as high as ninety percent
Speaker 2: to as low as sixty five percent. Sixty five percent
Speaker 2: is really low. And the problem is that we're often
Speaker 2: using these these technologies in in edge cases. You know,
Speaker 2: there's really difficult to determine things, and the stakes are
Speaker 2: so high that I don't think it's appropriate to be
Speaker 2: using these technologies to decide whether someone lives or dies,
Speaker 2: or whether someone's going to rest of their life in prison.
Speaker 6: I think the dramatic example that you provide about Gary
Speaker 6: Ridgeway being questioned and then polygraphed and then passing and
Speaker 6: then went on to kill at least seven more women,
Speaker 6: the idea that someone could beat this machine is interesting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's actually it's very it's trivially easy to be.
Speaker 2: You can train. You can train to be in the
Speaker 2: machine fairly simply by basically learning how to alter your
Speaker 2: responses to the control questions so that when the real
Speaker 2: questions come around, there's no difference. Right, if you can
Speaker 2: artificially speed up your blood pressure or your pouse when
Speaker 2: you ask the control question and when you ask a
Speaker 2: tarlet question, that you know there will be no difference.
Speaker 2: So you know, all these forms of the right detection
Speaker 2: are sort of slightly flawed in different ways, and that
Speaker 2: makes them problematic.
Speaker 6: I think the most dangerous part is to use the
Speaker 6: lie detector to clear people of guilt. And reading so
Speaker 6: many books about investigations where they utilize the polygraph, it's
Speaker 6: fascinating to realize that how many potential serial killers or
Speaker 6: killers that slipped through their fingers because they relied solely
Speaker 6: on that light detective test.
Speaker 2: That's it. And I think even the problem is if
Speaker 2: it's framed as a lie, if it's framed as one
Speaker 2: tool and tall in a suite of many different tools,
Speaker 2: and it's given them appropriate waiting, that maybe it's it's
Speaker 2: a Casey said, But I think the problem is when
Speaker 2: you cause something a SAX test, you give it more
Speaker 2: weight than it warrants. And actually, who knows if they
Speaker 2: hadn't done a lied to tad test on Gara Wageway,
Speaker 2: maybe they would have found more evidence or done more digging,
Speaker 2: or you know, been more suspicious for longer, and maybe
Speaker 2: they would have kept him in jail. And you don't
Speaker 2: know what that case sort of looked like if the
Speaker 2: polygrop test hadn't been used right, and how it would
Speaker 2: have progressed. So that's really problematic.
Speaker 6: I think John Larson had planned to write his magnus opus.
Speaker 6: You say, but he died sorting through his manuscript pages.
Speaker 6: But you say that today a new wave of light
Speaker 6: detection technologies are coming to market, powered by brain scans
Speaker 6: and artificial intelligence. Tell us some of the things that
Speaker 6: are being adopted by police and other institutions and agencies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's been a long history of this sort
Speaker 2: of stuff that it started in the kind of seventies.
Speaker 2: It seems like voice stress analysis, which kind of tries
Speaker 2: to to tell someone's lying based on their tone of voice.
Speaker 2: Then through the eighties and nineties there was brain finger printing,
Speaker 2: which I talked about that uses brain scans wear kind
Speaker 2: of a cat on your head of electrodes that measures
Speaker 2: your brain waves. There's also fMRI based brain scanning, so
Speaker 2: you sit in an MRI scanner while you look at
Speaker 2: these questions and supposedly that compel if you're lying as well.
Speaker 2: And then more recently there's kind of AI powered line
Speaker 2: detection technology. So I went to do a test by
Speaker 2: a company called convers which looks at your people dilation
Speaker 2: as you answer a series of questions and determines that
Speaker 2: tries to use that to determine whether you're live or not.
Speaker 2: Sort of theory is that if you are thinking harder
Speaker 2: than your peoples are more dilated, that that's true. The
Speaker 2: theory is that if you're lying and thinking harder, therefore
Speaker 2: your people's are more dilated, and that could be a
Speaker 2: way to catch liers. So yeah, there's a whole speed
Speaker 2: of technologies. Often the investment in the new li detection
Speaker 2: technologies sort of goes hand in hand with the political
Speaker 2: climate of the time. So when governments are trying to
Speaker 2: look tough on security and crime and that, they'll fund
Speaker 2: things like reforms of fly detection. So there was a
Speaker 2: big spike in reforms of light detection after nine to eleven,
Speaker 2: for instance, And you know, so that's where we're at.
Speaker 2: And you know, these forms of bye detection are being
Speaker 2: adopted even though they're not one hundred percent accurate, and
Speaker 2: they have some of the same flaws as the polygraph.
Speaker 2: And the biggest problem with the polygraph and is what
Speaker 2: research is called the fact that there's no Pinocchio's knows right.
Speaker 2: There's no telltale sign of lying. That's true for everyone
Speaker 2: all of the time. And without that, you know, these
Speaker 2: machines you can't you can't know if someone's pulse is
Speaker 2: going up because they're lying or because they're nervous about
Speaker 2: being wrong. With the acused of lying, you can never know.
Speaker 2: And that's the real problem with not only the polygraph,
Speaker 2: but all these new forms of right detection technology. And
Speaker 2: I think that's the lesson that can be learned from
Speaker 2: the stories of Henry Wilkins, a report from Loss and
Speaker 2: August former len Keeler. You know, from one hundred years ago.
Speaker 2: That's the lesson that we should take through to today
Speaker 2: and into the future.
Speaker 6: You talk about that lesson to take away what would
Speaker 6: John Larson has said based on what he did have
Speaker 6: to write and say.
Speaker 2: About today about the current technology. I think he would
Speaker 2: have been frankly horrified that the podygrap is still being used.
Speaker 2: I think he would have urged more validation. I think
Speaker 2: he would have said, you know, we shouldn't be using
Speaker 2: these things in criminal cases until we're one hundred percent
Speaker 2: sure they work. And I think maybe he would have
Speaker 2: come out to the view that you can never be
Speaker 2: one hundred percent sure they work, so maybe we shouldn't
Speaker 2: use them at all.
Speaker 6: Fascinating. I want to thank you very much for coming
Speaker 6: on and talking about your extraordinary book, Tremors in the
Speaker 6: Blood Murder, Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector.
Speaker 6: For those that might want to take a look at
Speaker 6: your work as do you have a website and you
Speaker 6: do any social media?
Speaker 2: Yes, so I have a website, It's a metz Katsula
Speaker 2: dot k do at uk. I'm also on Twitter yet
Speaker 2: that you can finally keep keep up with my work
Speaker 2: as well. I also write the Wired dot com since
Speaker 2: can find my work on wide as well.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much, Amit Katwala Tremors in the Blood Murder,
Speaker 6: Obsession and the Birth of the Lie Detector. Thank you
Speaker 6: so much for this interview and you have a great
Speaker 6: evening and good night.
Speaker 2: Thank you, B