Part Two: The Bastards of Forensic Science

Robert is joined again by Dr. Kaveh Hoda to continue to discuss why Forensic Science really doesn't work. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also media.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That is the funniest thing anyone has ever said on
this show, and we're going to have to I mean,
obviously we've already edited it out because it's also definitely
an actionable threat against what I can't believe, Gava, is
that you even had their home address.

Speaker 3 (00:29):
Wow, what a bit you know. You learn these things
when you're a doctor. It's important to know as much
about someone as.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
You can m hopefully anyway, welcome back to part two, everybody.
This is Behind the Bastards, a podcast where every week
we get as close to getting our guests, doctor Cavajda
in trouble with the authorities as possible without actually doing
it thanks to the kind of happened one of these days.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
Thank you for having me back, Tava. Yes, Robert, how
do you?

Speaker 2 (01:00):
How do you feel so far talking about bitemark analysis?

Speaker 3 (01:05):
I think it's really interesting. I think forensic quote unquote
science is a fascinating topic because it's such an important
part of our legal system. And as we discussed in
the first episode, if you haven't listened to it, you
should go back and listen to it. Like, why are
you listening to this one? What do you do? Your maniac?
But I kind of dig it too, So if that's
your thing, then I'm down with it. But also a

(01:27):
short I think it's really fascinating to like see how
some of these things that aren't really based in the
science as I would see it and as I'm used to,
how it's grown and how it's used unfortunately in these
really tragic cases. And I'm assuming you probably have more
of people being, you know, sent to prison for crimes

(01:49):
that did not commit and and it's it's a really
interesting time to do it too. And I don't know
if you can go into this. You probably aren't, but
you know, because we're O. J. Simpson died recently, and
in his case, there was a lot of DNA evidence.
And I'm not like an og Simpson like official by
any chance. I don't know much about that case, but

(02:09):
I know there was DNA evidence, and it seems like
it was around ninety four when it was still pretty
new to people, and I don't think people really knew
that much about DNA evidence at the time, so I
think like it could have made a pretty big difference
his case, maybe if it was done now as opposed
to then, for example, And that's like part of forensic
science as opposed to like bitemarks, which in maybe fingerprinting,

(02:34):
which seemed a little bit softer in that regard of science.
So I think it's really fascinating. I'm not bummed out yet,
although there.

Speaker 2 (02:41):
Are tragic there's some sad aspects. I just got sent
to prison for thirty years. Who was innocent? Yeah I
sound now, I sound like a fucking monster, thank.

Speaker 3 (02:51):
You very much.

Speaker 2 (02:51):
Just an innocent man.

Speaker 3 (02:56):
We're just innocent men like that. One mean, but I do.
But but I do think it's a really interesting topic
and I think it's a super important one. So I'm glad. Yeah,
I'm glad you're doing it.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, I you know, Actually, Kava, I have I have
a different opinion about the O. J. Simpson case than
a lot of people. I half watched that TV show
about it a few years back, and I was I
was kind of fucked up at the time. But I
I currently believe that Ross from Friends was the murderer.
That would make sense, that would answer the way he
kept saying. Juice just didn't sit right with me.

Speaker 3 (03:28):
Quick quick aside, Did you know that O. J. Simpson
had like a prank show? Yeah? And like it was
this terrible, terrible prank show made no sense. It was
so silly and stupid, and like the catch line was, hey,
you've been juiced, like when he come out.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
It's so funny, man, that's that's that's great.

Speaker 1 (03:49):
Robert likes to bring up that Ross from Friends played
Robert Kardashian and that Ojy.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
One of the funniest pieces of casting ever.

Speaker 1 (03:56):
Because like get up, often it might be just a
Roman and if the Roman Empire, was it your Roman Empire?

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Well, the problem is that specifically Ross from Friends shouldn't
be allowed to play other people because he's always just
gonna be rot You. I can't believe you as Robert
Kardashian's screaming juice at your friend. I believe the guy
who played OJ is OJ. He was great, but you're
just You're always Ross from Friends. Now, I'm sorry, I'm not.
You're a millionaire. It's fine.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
He's okay with it, I'm sure. Yeah, like Leonard Nimoy
is okay or was okay being Spock. I think at
some point he got used to it.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, he made peace with it. Judging by the titles
of his biography, you.

Speaker 1 (04:35):
Can't be anything else but one thing. That's what you're
doing to this person to ross from friends.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
Yes, that's what he is, and he's a murderer. I
think so.

Speaker 3 (04:45):
Well.

Speaker 2 (04:46):
We just finished our episode talking about people versus Marx,
which is kind of the the this this court case
that really helps to like provide the popular grounding for
bitemark analysis as a thing that's real. Now, this case established.
At the time that this case was adjudicated, the established
practice was that scientific evidence should not be accepted into

(05:09):
a court case unless the said evidence was generally accepted
by the relevant scientific community. This was known as the
Fry test. Based on the court case that established the standard. Again,
we're all talking about like matters of precedent here. Bitemark analysis,
like the kind performed by Veil and Levine in this
case was not based on generally accepted odontological science, because

(05:32):
why would odontologists have done this right? Like, it's not
really relevant to most of like dentistry even to like
trying to do this thing right. It's just there wasn't
an established kind of practice around how you should do this.
But an exception was made to the Fry test based
on the reasoning that bitemark matching was so simple any

(05:53):
lay juror could look at a cast of a bite
and a cast of a perps teeth and tell if
they matched. Because the eyeball test could tell if a
bite mark matched a set of teeth, it should be
admitted into court case right, And like you can see
how like the stereotypical layman who's you know, dumb might

(06:15):
buy that. But also I feel like maybe this is
just a matter of like it happened at a different time,
because when I read that, I want to scream inside,
like no, they can't, No, they can't. Why would you
think people could match a bite to a cast of teeth.
That doesn't make any sense at all.

Speaker 3 (06:30):
Fuck you. I think our faith in people has really
just gone down in general, is what I'm hearing here.
And I can't disagree with it. But it does, on
the surface seem very reasonable. It's like, Okay, well, this
is a very simple imprint. If this person has a
really weird, like shit mouth, you should line it up
with these things. It seems like it would make sense.

(06:51):
It's like to the general public, I could totally see that.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
I understand, like how this whole disastrous train of events
like got moving right, How the momentum got built up
behind it, so you know, the eyeball test. This is
going to wind up being kind of like it. It's
sort of a disaster that this gets established as a
way to verify whether or not a new forensic science
should be trusted, because it creates this very dangerous situation.

(07:19):
After Marx, a whole host of new kinds of experts
start coming forward using different kinds of pattern matching forensic
techniques like matching shoe prints or tire trends or bits
of hair based on visual signs. Alone, this bitemark analysis
case people versus Marx, it opens the floodgates on a

(07:39):
lot of nonsense getting introduced as forensic science. And the
positive side of this is we get a shitload of
TV shows based on forensic analysis. Right, this is where
all of them come from, this idea that there's all
these every crime scene, there's all these little clues and
you can, you know, you could, any little thing can
match the shoeprints. You can do this and like, none
of this stuff works. It either doesn't work at all

(08:01):
or it doesn't work as well. As the experts who
make their living based on convincing you it works perfectly
are going to claim and because they've now reset the
standard from forensic science has to be generally accepted in
the field to like, well, if it's an eyeball sort
of thing, you can introduce it. You know, it looks
good enough.

Speaker 3 (08:21):
Yeah, it's kind of like what we talked about too before,
which is like I think, like in general, in terms
of law, they if something's been set once, then it lasts.
It's this precedent. But like, on top of that, like
judges are probably more willing to allow things than to
keep things out of the trial if they don't understand it.
Because if someone can present a you know, convincing enough

(08:44):
argument that sounds like they know what they're talking about,
I can see why a judge would be like, oh, Okay,
this guy sounds smart enough. Well we'll leave it in
and the jury can do what they will with it.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:55):
It makes me think like rewatching Star Trek the next Generation,
as I'm usually doing. We're very lucky that all of
those screenwriters went to Hollywood rather than decided to do this,
because they could have created some technobabble bullshit that would
have locked a lot of people away. Yeah, whoever was
writing Jordie's dialogue could have been very dangerous in another career.

(09:18):
This is the second show I've.

Speaker 3 (09:20):
Done with you where we get into the Star Trek.
I feel like we should just do a whole episode
on Star Trek the Next Generation.

Speaker 2 (09:27):
There's nothing I'd love more. But I feel like there's
also a million of those shows. Look listeners, find a rich,
crazy person who will pay for me to do a
show on Star Trek the Next Generation, and I'll do it.
But I feel like there's there's a lot of that anyway.
So after Mars, the burden of proof when you're introducing
science into a lot of these cases has shifted drastically.

(09:51):
No longer do experts have to show their processes in
line with an established scientific field. The burden of proof
is on the defense attorney to create doubt against the
claims of an expert. The successive dentists like Levine and
Veil opened the floodgates to a whole host of men
who read and less qualified, pushing to convict people based
on analysis that is even less scientific. In the reality

(10:11):
of bitemark analysis is that it was always questionable. Harward,
the Navy man that Levine got convicted after arguing that
only he could have bit Terresa Peronne was ultimately proven
innocent and released after losing thirty years of his life
to the criminal justice system, and a lot more people
lose precious time as a result of this bullshit, sometimes

(10:32):
all the time that they had thanks to the fountain
of forensic conmen enabled by people v.

Speaker 3 (10:37):
Marx.

Speaker 2 (10:38):
Fabricant cites this infuriating story in his book Junk Science Quote.
The Connecticut Supreme Court adopted the eyeball test and state v.
Mark Read a rape conviction involving the use of hair microscopy,
a technique that matches two hairs together through visual observation
of the interior characteristics of human hair. Hair matching evidence
was admissible not because it had been scientifically validated, but

(11:00):
because jurors were free to make their own determinations as
to the weight they would accord the expert's testimony and
light of the photograph and their own powers of observation
and comparison. Ten years later, DNA proved that the jurors
powers of observation had led to Mark Reid's wrongful conviction.
He was innocent. The negroid hair a racist and anachronism
still used in forensics today. Match to Read was in

(11:21):
fact the pubic hair of his accuser, the white woman
who had identified Read a black man as her rapist.

Speaker 3 (11:27):
Oh my god, that's disgusting. Oh my god. Yes, that's
just real bad. That's just just give me a moment.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Let's all sit with that for a second.

Speaker 3 (11:38):
Damn it. That's so rough on so many levels.

Speaker 2 (11:41):
Yeah, it's it's I mean part of why. And again,
the primary reason this is bad is because a lot
of innocent people are getting convicted. The other reason it's
bad is because outside of these quacks doing hair matching,
there are people who are really trying hard and using
scientific methods to try and catch murderers and rapists, which
is import And this also it makes it impossible to

(12:04):
trust them, you know, the way that we should be
able to. That's part of why that like this is
so comprehensively vile. What's happened with this industry of grifters
that have subsumed forensic sciences?

Speaker 3 (12:17):
Can I ask a question, and yeah, this is probably
not something you're privy to, but do they ever in
your reading or research for this, did you ever come
across a case of an expert like in one of
these like soft sciences here forensic sciences that was then
later like asked about a case that had been overturned
because of DNA and did they ever like did they

(12:39):
still try to fight it or were they like, yeah,
it was a mistake, we made a mistake. Was there
any response from them?

Speaker 2 (12:43):
Like usually usually no response. I can't find a single
case of a guy being like, oh, yeah, you know what,
I horribly fucked up and my entire life has been
a lie.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
Well, I guess And when you say it like that,
I guess it makes sense why they don't do it,
but like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:56):
Yeah, I you know, I don't know, because it's tough
because like, again, there are real you have to if
somebody is out there committing rapes and murders, they should
be identified and stopped. And there are going to be
different scientific techniques that are developed over time that will
allow to make those kinds of identifications. And just because

(13:20):
the people doing it are human, they will fuck up
sometimes without it being them being irresponsible, just because people
are imperfect, right the same way that doctors will fail
to save patients who could have been saved because you know,
that's just that's the reality of the world. But at
the same time, when I read about cases like this
with people doing this bullshit, Like you think you hear

(13:41):
hair matching, you think like, oh, well, they're probably getting
DNA from the hair and match again. No, they're looking
at two hairs and saying, well, this is clearly a
negroid hair. That guy should do as much prison time
as the guy who got wrongfully convicted.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
You know, if COVID taught us nothing else, it's that
you have to the people you should trust the most
in terms of the expert opinions are the ones that
admit when there is limitations and when there's some doubt.
When anyone tells you this is the exact answer to
a novel or new issue, you have to take that
with a grain of salt, because nobody wants to bring

(14:12):
on like that, that person onto their show, Like No, CNN, Fox.
They don't want to bring someone onto the show that
said like, well, you know, there's a lot we don't
know yet, we're still trying to figure it out. They
bring on the person that's like, oh, the answer to
this is don't rub your eyeballs, And that's one hundred
percent the way that's going to keep you from getting
sick with Covid et cetera.

Speaker 2 (14:30):
It's the same thing that happened. You know, we just
had this case where Israel struck an Iranian embassy in
Syria and Iran responded by firing missiles and drones into Israel.
And online when all this started, the number of people
who are like, this is World War III, right, is like,

(14:51):
you can wait. You can wait to know. Like, not
that it's not important to care about this, but you
sitting at home in fucking Saint Louis, Missouri, you don't
need to have an opinion about what the fallout for
this is going to be the night that it happens.
Just give it a day or two until we know
some more about what's actually happening, right, you know that's

(15:13):
that's I I people.

Speaker 3 (15:15):
Sophie has a look on her face. I think I
know what she's going to add here.

Speaker 4 (15:18):
Oh, I'm waiting to see if you'll do it.

Speaker 3 (15:21):
Listen, I'm not going to correct the way he says Iran.
You know what, I petitioned that we now we now
refer to Iran as Iran and Iranian because I love
Robert that much. Okay, you hear that out there? So
people are out there stop messaging, please, please please stop

(15:41):
messaging me to correct the way Robert says Iran. I
I love the way he says it. I've given up.

Speaker 2 (15:49):
Thank you, thank you, thank you. In response to that,
I'm going to make it. I'm going to make a
grand gesture that I think might be able to heal
some of the damage in this world. Austin, Texas now
a suburb of Tehran. Oh, I think it's a good idea.
I think the tacos that are going to come out
of this will be incredible.

Speaker 3 (16:10):
Oh my god, the food that will come out of us. Listen,
you can't take the food from us. You can say
a lot about us, but you can't take our food
from us. And you put us in Austin, I bet
you will make some magic happen.

Speaker 2 (16:20):
I know the kinds of barbecue science that will come
out of this set still be a marriage outstanding.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yes.

Speaker 2 (16:28):
Anyway, back to bite mark analysis. So in those early publications,
a bite mark analysis that before they actually got this
sort of up and running as a quote unquote science,
Levine and his cohorts had had acknowledged that there are
issues you can't really analyze bites in soft tissue. The
way that you can analyze bites in cartilage, which is
why they were so excited about the Marks case, right

(16:50):
because it was a good what's called a three dimensional
bite that they could actually cast. But as soon as
bite mark analysis is accepted as forensic science, they dropped
the whole Well, soft tissue bite marks aren't really you
can't really analyze them reliably, and just started going a
hog wild with identifications. Veil, the dentist from the Marx case,

(17:12):
testified two years later, this time as a certified member
of the AAFS Forensic Odontology Branch, about a bitemark and
a young murder victim's thigh. This was exactly the kind
of bite that earlier had been acknowledged as a bad
fit for analysis, but now the court praised the superior
trustworthiness over scientific bitemark analysis rather than less reliable kinds

(17:33):
of forensic science. The reality is that there was very
little science of any kind around bite marks. Once the
nucleus of forensic dentists had there any placed for themselves
in the AAFS, they set up a forensic board and
locked the field into a system where newbies apprenticed themselves
to established physicians and the practice of bitemark analysis became
a thing of wisdom handed down rather than a thing

(17:55):
of empirical study. And part of the problem here, part
of what makes this an emposts for science to develop
out of this. Right, it is possible in certain cases
to match teeth to a bite mark. I'm not going
to say that's a thing that you could never do,
but the number of cases in which you could actually
do that responsibly is a tiny, tiny fraction of the

(18:16):
number of cases that involve a bite. There's no incentive
financially to be honest about that, to say this is
not a good candidate for bitemark analysis. If your job
is selling bitemark analysis, right, right, the thing like your
financial interest is in saying every case, oh yeah, I
can tell you some good stuff about that bitemark.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Right. It's not like these people I imagine, you know,
like there are expert witnesses in different fields of science,
and there are people who come from other places and
they get paid for it, and you could argue about that,
but they're coming from places where they already have like
jobs doing other things. They work at a university where
they are like a professor and they do research, and

(18:57):
then or there are a doctor in a case and
then they have their own practice and then they're asked
to do this. If your field exists solely to be
an expert witness essentially, then that seems strange to me.
That does seem like a bit problematic. I mean, I
assume defence lawyers will use that argument, but I could

(19:17):
see that being questionable.

Speaker 2 (19:19):
A lot of times they don't know to where they
don't feel like they can because you know, again in
their heads, like I'm just some lawyer. This is a doctor,
you know, it's a It causes problems. And again we
should note that like in any of these cases, forensic
evidence is not the only evidence. There's other stuff going
into it. But a lot of times forensic evidence is
what cinches these bad convictions. And this is like acknowledged

(19:43):
at the time by like the prosecutors and shit that like, yeah,
it was that bitemark analysis that got us this conviction.

Speaker 3 (19:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (19:49):
So again, what you have with this kind of growing
field is you've got this board at the AFS that
are able to certify people as like these are the
real bite mine analysts. And this becomes like once you're
in that, the only way to become a bitemark analyst
is to get approval from these people who are already

(20:09):
very biased in such a way as to make this
be a profitable industry. And obviously, mentorship is a necessary
part of any medical field, any scientific discipline, really right,
And that's not a bad thing. It's not bad that,
you know, most doctors have mentors when they're younger doctors
with more experienced doctors. But what you get with these
forensic boards is more akin to a medieval guild than

(20:31):
anything we would associate with modern science. There is no
kind of opened peer review structure built into the field,
and the only people watching out to see if people
are practicing utter bunk are other people who have a
vested financial interest in maintaining the reputation of their field.
This becomes a problem when con men find their way
into practicing bitemark analysis, and that brings me to the

(20:52):
hideous story of Michael West, a dentist from Hattiesburg, Mississippi.
West decided to become a bitemark specialist when he realized
there was a potential fortune to be made in becoming
the Amazon dot Com bite forensics at the height.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Oh that's such as a terrible phrase. Terrible phrase. Oh
my god, cove it.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Do you know much about like conducting an autopsy and
how much time that takes and stuff.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
I've worked on cadavers, but I've never actually been on
a true full autopsy. I assumed it's a very long time.
It's a long process, it's a lot to do.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
It is pretty involved, and so it should have seemed
weird to people that at the height of his career
in the early nineties, West was conducting between twelve hundred
and eighteen hundred autopsies a year, And most experts will
agree is a lot for a dentist, super a dentist,
for a dentists, that is quite a few autopsies for

(21:48):
a dentist.

Speaker 3 (21:51):
Wow, it sounded like a lot.

Speaker 4 (21:54):
And then I remember, also dentist.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
He's a dentist. Yeah, this is not a guy who
is like an expert of autopsy or.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
Like, you know, not like a dentist in the doc
holiday old West, where that meant he can be like
a surgeon as well, like like a modern day Yeah.

Speaker 2 (22:11):
Wow, now I know what you're saying here, Kava, Are
there even that many murder cases where somebody gets bitten?
And the answer is no. But West developed an ingenious
method for turning any run of the mill death into
a homicide with bitemarks that he could match to whatever
victim he was hired to look over. And I'm going
to quote from journalist Radley Balco, writing for Reason dot

(22:34):
Com describing this West's methods. Kava, you are about to
have a conniption fit here quote a fluorescent black light
flicks on. West is now employing a much ridiculed technique
he invented for identifying bite marks, which he modestly calls
the West phenomenon. He claims that by using a black
light and yellow goggles, he can find bitemarks, knife serrations,

(22:55):
and other tears and abrasions to the skin that no
other expert can see.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
Okay, can we start by the fact that he calls
it the West phenomenon a douchebag?

Speaker 2 (23:06):
Oh shit, Oh my god, that should get you flung
into the sea.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
Oh my god, Like naming it after yourself with this
ridiculous like it has to be yellow goggles, Like he's
like studied UV lighting or some shit like that. What
a terrible I don't know. I don't need to know
any more about him. I don't like him.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
Oh you're about to hear a lot more so. Once
he's found these bite marks, West can have a judge
compel whoever's been accused in the case and get a
cast made of their teeth. Right then, he simply takes
the cast and he uses it to put bite marks
on the dead body, thus creating the evidence that he
was hired to find. There are video tapes of him

(23:47):
doing this during an autopsy West conducted on a twenty
three month old baby named Haley olive O. Quote West's
hand then enters the frame holding a plastered dental mold
taken earlier that day from Jimmy Dunn, who was accused
of killing this kid. Using the replica of Duncan's teeth
as a weapon, West repeatedly presses and jams the front
bite plate directly into Olivo's cheek. Over two minutes, he

(24:11):
does this seventeen times. At six fifty seven, he starts
dragging Duncan's mold across olive O's face, beginning near her lips,
then scraping the plaster teeth down her face to her jaw.
He does this for another minute. Wes's next moves to
Olivo's elbow and uses the cast to impress Duncan's dentition
into an old Bruce hospital record show she suffered weeks
before her death. With the lights out, West continues to

(24:33):
jam the plaster cast into the girl's cheek, elbow, in arm.
Over the course of the twenty four minute video, West
pushes the cast of Duncan's teeth into the girl's body
at least fifty times.

Speaker 1 (24:43):
I know I don't usually ask you to like skip
ahead for me, but can you blink twice? If it
ends badly for this motherfucker?

Speaker 2 (24:51):
It definitely doesn't. So, I mean, it doesn't end well
for him, but it doesn't end the way.

Speaker 3 (24:57):
It should issue him.

Speaker 2 (24:59):
It's should being flung into the sea.

Speaker 4 (25:01):
It should hoping for from from flumping.

Speaker 3 (25:07):
It should aim, it should This is the story to
end with him tripping and falling into a bubbling cauldron
of herpes.

Speaker 2 (25:14):
A cauldron would be.

Speaker 3 (25:15):
Great, Yea.

Speaker 1 (25:16):
The cauldron of herpes feels valid here, and that's kind
of the end I was hoping for.

Speaker 4 (25:21):
Okay here, because I'm deeply disturbed.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Real quick though, I'm sorry, someone was recording him doing this,
like there's hitten.

Speaker 2 (25:29):
This is an autopsy. They're they're like recorded, yeah, okay,
and this is so, this is like it's reviewed and
like this is part of what starts this guy kind
of being unwound as an expert. But in the in
this specific case, the footage that shows him creating bite
marks in the corpse was not entered into evidence, so
it had no role. In the initial trial of the

(25:51):
mine accused of murdering Hayley, his charge was raised to
capital murder, and the bite marks were cited as one
of the reasons why. But in the time between his exam,
between the exam West conducted and the actual trial over
this death, West was discredited due to reporting around his
deeply questionable methods, including this video. So the prosecution just

(26:11):
shopped around for another dentist. They tried Lowell Levine, but
he was familiar enough with west shady ass behavior to
turn them down. He's like, nah, man, I'm not that dumb,
Like absolutely not.

Speaker 3 (26:22):
Yeah, maybe shady, but not that shady. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:25):
Eventually they found a dental examiner who'd looked over photos
West had taken of the fraudulent exam he'd carried out
and confirmed that the defendant had left the bitemarks. Balco writes,
despite West's disintegrating reputation and the fact that the bitemark
evidence was derived from his work. Louisiana Fourth Judicial District
Judge Charles Joyner ruled in nineteen ninety five that the
video contained no exculpatory evidence favorable to the defendant, a

(26:49):
finding hotly disputed by all the forensic specialists consulted for
this article, and that therefore prosecutors didn't need to hand
it over. The state maintained at first that the defense
is somehow hoping to drag doctor West into this case
in order to create ancillary issues for the jury, but
by nineteen ninety six, prosecutors werelented and gave defense attorneys
the video, but Duncan's attorneys never showed the video to

(27:10):
their own dental examiner. This point would have become crucial,
since the bite marks were the only physical evidence used
to elevate Duncan from a negligent guardian to a lethal
child rapist.

Speaker 3 (27:20):
I don't understand, though, Like okay, I have so many questions. One,
did this West guy not? I mean, why would he
do that knowing he was filming it? Did you think
no one was going to see it?

Speaker 2 (27:32):
I think he thought he was explaining as he's doing
it basically like I'm testing, you know, this is where
I see the bite marks or whatever like.

Speaker 3 (27:41):
But he's making the bite marks right.

Speaker 5 (27:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
I think he thought nobody, nobody was gonna really care
to check, and they didn't for a while.

Speaker 3 (27:48):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (27:48):
People that are like that level of bold feel untouchable.
And I think he thought he could just get away
with doing this, and it sounds like he did.

Speaker 3 (27:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
West and the other dental examiner. There's another guy in
the room with him there during that autopsy guy.

Speaker 4 (28:06):
An examiner guy too.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
They fall out of favor because journalists like Balco start
writing about their methods. But West continued to testify as
an expert until two thousand and one. What stops him
being cited as it brought in an expert in court
cases is that in two thousand and one, a defense
lawyer decided to test him by sending him a cast
of an active defendants teeth and photos of bitemarks from

(28:31):
a closed solved homicide case. West confirmed that the dental
mold matched the photos of the bite marks, so you know,
basically there's an active case going on. The defense lawyer
sends him a cast of the defendant in that case
Keith Teeth, and then photos of bitemarks from a completely
different homicide that has already been solved, and West is like, oh, yeah,

(28:54):
this guy made those bite marks, and like, yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (29:00):
Mean, why would you believe that the defense lawyer is
trying to make you look dumb and you just help them.
It doesn't make this person seems it's insane to me
that this person was able to do this.

Speaker 6 (29:10):
Well.

Speaker 3 (29:10):
They also it's really incompetent.

Speaker 2 (29:12):
What's really insane is how little the fact that he's
obviously a fraud helps the people that he had helped
to get convicted. In two thousand and three, the Mississippi
Supreme Court held that quote just because doctor West has
been wrong a lot does not mean without something more
that he was wrong here in a trial for another
man he'd helped to convict in Brock.

Speaker 3 (29:31):
It's right twice today. So is doctor West.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
Yeah, and Jimmy Duncan, the guy convicted in the case
where he's fucking dragging a bite a toothcast across a
dead baby, still on death row as of twenty twenty three,
And it's one of those things where like, again, there's
other evidence a lot of the time, but in Duncan's case,
the only physical evidence was from West right, Like, it's.

Speaker 3 (29:55):
So, how has that not been how? I mean, maybe
this is ongoing, but like they don't how come the
Innocent Project isn't working with him on that?

Speaker 2 (30:04):
They are?

Speaker 3 (30:05):
They are.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
It's just like this, the fact that, like something seems
clearly fucked up number one, doesn't mean that you're going
to get court rulings that revisit you know, those cases
like it's it's just not it's a pain. It takes
a lot of a lot of these a lot of
people who are exonerated as a result of the projects worked.
It can take years or decades, you know.

Speaker 3 (30:25):
Right, and he might have done the case though no
other knowledge, but like you know, with with what evans,
you know, if that's the only evidence, then it's highly suspect.

Speaker 2 (30:34):
And and you know, certainly there are a lot of
cases where he matches a bite to a perp who
did do the murder. But that also doesn't like he
could still be lying. There's just other evidence, right, Like,
you know, the cops got the right guy and they
brought him in and he just agreed with you know
what the cops already thought. And in that case, he
was right because that guy happened to do it. But yeah,

(30:57):
it gives you an idea, just like how fucking sketchy.
A lot of this is now. One thing we should
all know at this point about scientific disinformation is that
if left unchecked, it spreads inevitably. Just like the sponsors
to our podcast who are always spreading out there in
the world.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Always fantasticizing getting out there like in cancer.

Speaker 2 (31:21):
That's why we love them.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
For your money, we're back.

Speaker 2 (31:31):
So the fact that scientific disinformation spreads if left unchecked
is why you have to fight vigorously against people who
want to deny basic facts of reality for their own profit.
If you ignore, say an anti vaxed doctor claiming vaccines
cause autism to make a fortune for himself, in a
few years you might have presidential candidates screaming about vaccine

(31:52):
chips orf i e. Remectin in schools full of kids
with whooping cough. The field of forensic science has the
same issue.

Speaker 3 (31:59):
I would even go even further than that and say,
you don't even know. It could be something even more subtle,
like some doctor who says, or I'm sorry, not doctor,
but some you know, famous actress says putting a jade
egg in your huha helps with such and such there
is Now I feel there's a direct line to that

(32:19):
that anti VAXX president. You know now I used to
not care that much. Now I do. Any bit of
this misinformation can lead eventually to this cascade. Eventually you
get RFK Junior like killing sim own babies. You know,
this is how it happens.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
That the derangement, Like, yeah, it meant it's a kind,
it's a kind of cancer. It acts that way at least.
And for an example of just how bad it can get,
I want to turn now to the story of doctor R.
Pod vas Now on paper, Kava R. Pod Voss is
as legit as it gets. This guy's got a PhD

(32:56):
in forensic anthropology. He works with the University of Tennessee's
world famous body farm. He even has a Ted talk,
and most of that Ted talk sounds pretty reasonable to me,
notably not a scientist, but it sounds good. It's a
lucid look at how human decomposition is impacted by various

(33:17):
factors and how cadabra dogs often labradors, work by smelling
different chemicals that are a product of said decomposition, and
then about seventy percent of the way through his ted talk,
we get this.

Speaker 6 (33:29):
Our next step is to develop our own Labrador and
the electronic version. We may not be good at a lot
of things, but we can nail those acronyms. Okay. This
instrument was designed specifically for two purposes, one to track

(33:51):
the chemical plume and the second to give the operator
an idea of which area has the highest concentration is
where the body is is where the concentration will be
the highest, and there's the plume MiG weights that moves away.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
So what he is selling here, and the reason he
brings up an acronym is that his device that is
basically a mechanical corpse sniffing dog, is called the Labrador,
and the Labrador in this case is an acronym for
lightweight analyzer for buried remains in decomposition, odor recognition, And
to be honest, that's a pretty good acronym.

Speaker 3 (34:28):
Like he did a.

Speaker 2 (34:30):
Salad art.

Speaker 3 (34:33):
And they came up with something.

Speaker 2 (34:34):
Yeah, they made it happen. The device looks like a
bulky metal detector. It looks like a metal detector with
extra shit glute on it. Right, if you were again,
say you were doing a Star Trek episode and you
needed a future metal detector. You'd get a metal detector
and you'd throw some shit on it. You know, That's
how this thing looks. It's yeah, anyway, his device is

(34:55):
this is bullshit, right, But it makes sense that something
like this might work. Right if a dog can sniff
out of buried cadaver, and dogs can definitely do that,
we should be able to somedate design a device that
can fulfill the same role electronically. You know that that
makes sense, and perhaps someday we will. But doctor Voss's
gizmo does not use anything that we would call regular science. Instead,

(35:17):
it functions on the principle of a divining rod. Do
you know anything about divining rods or dowsing, kave.

Speaker 3 (35:23):
We're talking about the old old school, like dust bowls,
wash fucking are Yeah, that's great, that's fucking great.

Speaker 2 (35:34):
If you haven't been pilled on this particular bit of esoterica.
Dowsing or divining rods go back a long time, at
least about five hundred years, and variations of the practice
probably predate that. The basic idea is that you get
either a Y shaped piece of wood or two curved
copper rods, or you know, there's a couple other variants
of this, and you walk around looking for water or
whatever underground, and when the two rods cross or the

(35:56):
y shape stick gets pulled down, that means that it's
right below you. Right when the rod or rods move
or whatever, that's a sign that you're standing above whatever
you're looking for. And dowsers have claimed over the years
they can find everything from underwater underground water to buried
treasure to corpses. And this is done in a couple
of different ways. I'm not going to labor on all

(36:16):
of the different ways. It is generally considered officially to
be a pseudoscience because repeated studies have not been able
to show that dowsing is any more accurate than random chance.

Speaker 3 (36:25):
It seems I could be easy to prove that, yeah. Yes.

Speaker 2 (36:27):
The explanation for why the sticks cross or get pulled
or whatever is something called the idio motor effect, and
this is when suggestions, beliefs, or expectations cause unconscious muscular movements.
Most people are probably broadly familiar with the concept what's
happening here is not wildly different from what happens with
cops and drug sniffing dogs right. While dowsing has its
origins primarily in finding water, which is why it's also

(36:50):
often called water witching. Doctor Voss is one of a
number of people who think it can and should be
used to find human remains. He always frames this as
focused on both giving the families closure in the case
of hikers who died somewhere off trail and their bodies
are never found, and of course aiding in murder investigations.
And before we get into this grift, and it is
a grift, I want to cite one paragraph from an

(37:11):
article on doctor Voss in Mother Jones. In June twenty
twenty one, scientists from the FBI Laboratory, George Mason University,
and the US Army Criminal Investigation Command conducted a controlled
blind test to evaluate the ability of dowsing rods to
detect buried bones. A control group of participants was asked
to look at nine holes and to identify which ones
they thought contained bones. A different group did the same

(37:33):
thing using dowsing rods, which they didn't have experience using
for this purpose. According to the study, the scientists determined
that neither method worked. In an email exchange with Mother Jones,
doctor Voss called that study useless and in his opinion, wrong,
though it is matters because he gets to train a
lot of cops and forensic investigators. He wrote back in

(37:54):
his email that he teaches his students proper dowsing and
the seventeen scientific prints that quote make the rods work,
which took me years to find out.

Speaker 3 (38:05):
Oh my god. Well, if your whole grift is based
on doing what a dog does but not as well,
like what a what a lame grift? Like we are
have dogs for that, Like, what's just.

Speaker 2 (38:21):
What are the scientific seventeen of them? What are those
scientific principles?

Speaker 3 (38:26):
Yeah, the fact that he's a Ted Talk and that
probably goes into that. I mean, it just goes to
show that, like you not everyone who gets a Ted
Talk is fucking really an expert on anything. I guess
you got. I mean that's a little disappointing. Actually, I
kind of assumed they'd have some level of like, you know,
criteria that has you have to give a Ted Talk.

Speaker 2 (38:46):
You have to assume the Ted Talk booker person or
whatever isn't a forensic scientist. It would be weird if
they were and this guy is a forensic scientist with
impressive credentials who works, who treat trains FBI agents.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
So what is he saying his again, it looks like
a metal detector with his extra shit.

Speaker 2 (39:04):
To dows for corpses. He has them walk around with
copper rods where there are bodies buried so that they
can find them.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
I mean, okay, I bite, what is the I want
to know, like, what is it about the dead body?
What pheromone? Because you know what is true? Like for example,
like there are researchers off the coast the pharallon islands
here in San Francisco who study orcas when they attack sharks,
and when a shark's body dies, it releases they think
a certain pheromone that acts as a warning sign to

(39:36):
other sharks to keep them away. So there is pheromones
that have been theorized to be released after death. Is
that what he's saying is that the body's releasing certain
odors or hormones that this device is picking up.

Speaker 2 (39:48):
Bodies do release certain like odors that you couldn't Again,
that's what like a cadaver dog is smelling, right, even
if you can't like physically smell out, even smell a
dead body. He's right in front of you. If it's
like buried or something, dogs can find them sometimes.

Speaker 3 (40:02):
Right.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
What he's doing is he's out on the body farm
where they take dead bodies and they put them in
various situations to see how decomposition works and also to
train like investigators and stuff. And so he's walking around
places where he and others no bodies are buried, and
they are dowsing and eventually finding them. And what's really
probably happening is a mix of they know there's a

(40:24):
body somewhere, there's obvious signs that a body was buried,
and the ideo motor effect takes care of the rest. Right,
That's what I think is actually happening here. But what
he is telling people is that you can dowse for corpses.
And you can't. You just can't. It's not real science.
But again, if it was real science, he wouldn't say
I spent years figuring it out. He would say, here

(40:46):
is all of my pure reviewed research showing why this works. Right,
there would be a body of this would who people
would dedicate their lives if you could walk around with
copper rods and they would somehow point out dead body
he's underground. Someone would dedicate their life to figuring out
why that would be interesting.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
Yes, people would be doing it all the time, by
the way, because people go on beaches looking for like
loose change. Imagine how much loose change people do go
dowsing a lot.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
So again, there's not data like to prove that this works,
but it doesn't matter because Voss is an instructor at
the National Forensic Laboratory in Oakridge, Tennessee. Here's how that
Mother Jones reporter attended his class where he's teaching police officers,
and here's how he described it. There are no official
dowsing rods at hand, but that doesn't matter. You can
use the flags Voss offers, bend them like you would

(41:38):
coat hangers. Fred Ponds, a private detective from Miami with
a dark mustache and beard, gets right to it. He
tears the red plastic rectangles off two stakes and spaces
his hands to measure about twelve inches of straight steel,
then bends the remaining metal into handles, holding the stakes
like six shooters. He walks over one of the suspected
grave sites, the stakes cross. He does it again. They

(41:58):
cross and again they cross. I'm not kidding, Ponce says,
marveling that his di y gravefinder seems to be working.
And again, reasonably we would go like, well, you're at
a body farm. You know, they buried bodies around here.
Most people who bury corpses probably aren't good at like
hiding all of the evidence and the fact that the

(42:20):
fact that you're trying to convince me this is real science,
and you could say, literally, any metal you bend works
for this, what else works that way?

Speaker 3 (42:27):
I don't expect I don't okay, I don't expect that much,
but like we're expecting like an eighteenth century technology to
help us, yeah, yeah, whatever, to help us find these
these corpses. I feel like we've gone wrong. I feel
like we've done We've like law enforcement's gone astray.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Yeah, it might be fair to say that at this point,
reasonable people, and only reasonable people listen to this podcast
might say that sounds like nonsense. But doctor Voss's class
is among the most loved portions of the ten week
training course at the National Forensic Academy. It costs students,
mostly crime scene investigators from agencies in forty nine US states,

(43:11):
twelve thousand dollars of your tax dollars, so that's cool.
The academy itself is widely respected. The Washington Post called
it the Harvard of Hellish Violence. Voss's techniques are used
all over the country by real law enforcement officers in
spite of the fact that a lot of this is
just obviously bullshit. And for evidence of that, I'd like

(43:33):
to turn back to the Labrador, which we opened this
portion of the episode, discussing that July fifth, twenty twelve.
TED Talk is not one of the more more popular
TED talks. It's got like fourteen thousand views at present,
but the fact that Vos got a TED Talk might
suggest to some people that his Labrador was a real product.
As far as I can tell, it is not. The
device never launched commercially. When asked about this, Doctor Voss

(43:56):
always claims he has a patent on the device, as
if that matters. Mother Jones cites Diane France, director of
the Colorado Human Identification Laboratory. She notes, you can patent anything.
It doesn't mean that it works, It just means the
design has to be different from other products. Diane noted
that she's never seen the Labrador, let alone been able

(44:16):
to test it. Mother Jones could only find one expert
who claimed to have used the device, and that expert
was Michael Hadzel, president of the nonprofit Peace River Canine
Search and Rescue Association from Inglewood, Florida. He claims to
be field testing the device and that it has a
sixty percent success rate, but did not provide any data

(44:37):
on this whatsoever. And I will note that a guy
testing a device without backup and saying it works sixty
percent of the time is remarkably close to saying it
works about as well as the flip of a coin.

Speaker 3 (44:47):
Super super bullshit aeron no error rates study again, getting
back to that thing we talked about in the first
episode error rates study, this is like, this is exactly
the flip of a coin, and no one will ever
do a study on on this because it's nonsense and
there's only it's a device that doesn't exist.

Speaker 2 (45:04):
Obviously, as we as I've noted repeatedly, there's a lot
of problems with the way that police use dogs forensically.
But we know that dogs can smell this stuff, and
part of how we not is we have studied their
noses extensively. Like we have, there's data on how sensitive
a dog's nosis. Because it's science, because people noticed dogs
seemed supernaturally good at something, and rather than just saying, well,

(45:28):
that's good enough for me, they figured out the underpinning
reasons why. Because that's that's how real science is done.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (45:36):
The patent application itself lists the device. Actually, this is
the application I think for a successor device to the Labrador,
that's the improvement on. It lists the this this corpse
sniffing gadget as having two L shaped antenna that allow
it to channel electromagnetic waves. In other words, he basically
built a divining rod in the form factor of a

(45:56):
metal detector.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
I've updated. I'm now call fairse you're gonna device.

Speaker 2 (46:04):
I found an analysis. One of the best write ups
of this guy as a con man comes from the
website PCT missing dot org. The PCT is the Pacific
Crest Trail, right, this is it's the same. The Appalation
Trail is kind of the other one in the US.
You've got these two massive, long, continent wide trails that
like for a lot of people, it's their whole life
ambition to do the PCT, or to do the the

(46:26):
the Appellation, or to do both of them, right, And
because I don't know, parts of it seem appealing to me,
and then I think that's how tired i'd get.

Speaker 3 (46:35):
Oh my god, no, God, bless them. I'm so glad
somebody wants to do that.

Speaker 2 (46:38):
Yeah, it's very impressive. Obviously it can be dangerous, right,
people die doing this with some regularity, not the obviously,
not most people who do it. But it's not uncommon
for people to go missing. And so there's this website,
pct missing dot org that that both covers these missing
report person's cases, and what they're doing here is kind
of as journalists trying to advocate to families that are

(47:00):
being preyed upon by doctor Voss. Quote. The full patent
makes more references to divining rods, and during the Casey
Anthony trial in twenty eleven, doctor Voss admitted to dowsing
for graves as a hobby. Now, when I read that,
I said, what the fuck? And I clicked the hyperlink

(47:21):
on the words Casey Anthony trial, and that hyperlink took
me to a Casey Anthony trial. Fancam YouTube account that
includes cut up videos of doctor Voss's testimony during the
Casey Anthony trial. Where he was employed by the prosecution
as an expert witness when they were trying to prove
that that Toddler's dead body had at one point been

(47:43):
in the trunk of Anthony's car. So the prosecutors want
Voss to show that because he could find chemical evidence
of like the chemicals released by a decomposing body, that
the dead kid had been in Anthony's trunk. Right, That's
why they have him on.

Speaker 3 (47:56):
Right.

Speaker 2 (47:56):
Here's how Mother Jones describes Voss's performance in the Case
Anthony trial. Voss claimed that an air sample from the
trunk revealed high levels of compounds consistent with human decomposition
based on his research. An analytical chemist from Florida International
University testified that Voss's testimony wasn't backed up by scientific evidence,
and that many of the compounds Voss identified could have

(48:17):
been omitted by food wrappers and other trash recovered from
Anthony's trunk. Anthony was acquitted in part because of doubts
about the air sample from the car. Legal experts set
at the time. Now that's all fucked up and bio.
Before you get into it, I don't know anything about
the Casey Anthony trial. If you have a strong opinion
about that. I'm not making an opinion on the verdict
of that trial. What I am having an opinion on

(48:38):
is doctor Voss's testimony during that trial, because even being.

Speaker 3 (48:41):
A part of it, why is this guy a part
of it?

Speaker 2 (48:45):
I should not be in a fucking court room unless
he's being charged as a con man.

Speaker 3 (48:50):
No matter how dumb you think things are, it's just
like they get dumber, Like are their children running the courts?
Why is this happening? Why is he even a part
of it?

Speaker 2 (49:00):
He's got again, he has really good paper qualifications, but
when he actually gets on the stand, it's so fucking funny.
And I'm actually gonna play you a bit from this
video collage of his testimony during the trial.

Speaker 6 (49:12):
At vas r P A. D v Ass. I think
I can make in a logical non logical, but I
can make a conclusion. You know, it's just another corroboration
of what my nose tells me is correct.

Speaker 5 (49:28):
Did you do any other instrumental examinations of the carpet
piece that you significant ones?

Speaker 6 (49:35):
I don't think I would call any. We don't know
where the source is. It could have been from decomposition
or it could have been from gasoline.

Speaker 5 (49:42):
Is they're a specific, established chemical odor signature for human decomposition,
A clear and specific one to human decomposition only.

Speaker 3 (49:56):
I do not think.

Speaker 7 (49:56):
So you are not a chemist, correct, You're not an
analytical chemist. Correct, you're not a biochemist.

Speaker 8 (50:07):
Correct, And therefore you really can't testify as to the
chemistry and the makeup of things of which you have
no experience.

Speaker 6 (50:18):
Correct, well, if I've never looked at something, Yeah, I
suppose that's true to certain examines.

Speaker 7 (50:28):
But you do not list what you got your PhD in?
Could you tell the ladies and gentlemen of the jury
what you got your PhD in anthropology?

Speaker 6 (50:35):
Now that was the hearings.

Speaker 3 (50:41):
Now, look anthropology.

Speaker 2 (50:44):
Is it's so funny.

Speaker 3 (50:46):
I like that.

Speaker 2 (50:47):
That's such a good cross examination because like, look, there
are actually a lot of anthropologists in forensic science, right
that that there's a lot of things about anthropology. It's
a discipline that are relevant, especially when you're talking about
like digging up people who were murdered years ago and
buried and like all that. So obviously forensic scientists are useful.
What they are not is chemists. And if you are

(51:10):
as an anthropologist, claiming to have developed this like novel
technique of measuring chemicals that are specific to human decomposition.
I'm going to need to see that somebody who knows
chemistry professionally has been involved in that process.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
Backed this up. Oh my god, it's so disheartening. The
thing about it that's kind of a bummer is that, like,
you know, I get it if you would come across
on the stand as being like really knowledgeable, authoritative, but
he doesn't even seem like that. He can't even like
fake it that well, like you know, gonna be a grifter,
you gotta he's not even good at it.

Speaker 2 (51:42):
It's gotta be both that like a lot of cops
are just not all that bright, and also I assume
one to one he's charming enough that like he makes
you feel like he knows what he's talking about, But
he does not look good up on that stand.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
No, he does not look It's a bad grift. I
don't know how it's worked at all for him.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
I mean, you got it's remarkable, Jesus, Yeah, he sure did.
A consummate professional doctor Voss doesn't just make his money
teaching CSI guys and consulting badly on court cases. He
also reaches out to families who have lost loved ones.
Some of these people do speak highly of him. Dlana
Hall Bodmer's sister Gina, went missing in June of nineteen

(52:20):
eighty with a man named Stephen Epperley. Her body has
never been found, but Gina is sure doctor Voss located
it because his device signaled a frequency he matched to
her specific corpse in eight locations, which he claims means
she was dismembered and buried in eight different areas. Now,
Epperley had already been convicted in a rare nobody homicide.

(52:41):
I think he's actually one of the first nobody homicides
convictions in Florida. But you know, what they're looking for
is like where was she buried?

Speaker 3 (52:48):
Right?

Speaker 2 (52:48):
And he says like, well, I found evidence she was
cut up and buried in these parts, and they find
some bone fragments near where he picks out, And I
haven't found any confirmation that they were human. The last
article I read and said they were like still being analyzed,
but it seems like if they were, he would be
trumpeting that. So maybe again, if you spend a lot
of time in the woods, you run into a lot
of bones. Sure, right, and I've definitely seen bones are

(53:11):
I'm like, well, yeah, that could belong to It's just
a little shard of bone. I can't identify what it is.
I assume a doctor, a scientist of some sort could.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
But is he reaching out to these people directly or
are they coming to him?

Speaker 2 (53:23):
For I think it's a mix. But a lot of
times I do think he does reach out, especially if
it's like a big case. He's also you know, famous
enough that some people who are desperate to find their
lost loved ones, you know, go to him.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
This is still happening. He's still doing this. This is something, Yes,
this is still going.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
That's why that Pacific Crest Trail website is covering him,
because he's been sort of preying on people who have
lost loved ones on the trail.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (53:47):
And again, I we just brought up this case. This woman, Lana,
whose sister was murdered in nineteen eighty. She's clearly someone
who is mourning a lost loved one and desperately hopes
to get some kind of closure using what she thinks
is science. Right, she also is looking to Again, this
is very sad. Part of why she's working with doctor
Voss is that he's kind of convinced her that they

(54:10):
by figuring out how to use this device and using
her sister's case as a case study, they could also
use this thing to find abducted children, right, And this
presents an opportunity to Delana where she thinks, like, maybe
I can make something good come out of my sister's death.
And I understand that impulse, right, But this is not science,
and it's not doctor Voss isn't going to help anybody

(54:33):
like she has been taken for a ride by him,
and I mean, I think there's pretty gross of him.

Speaker 3 (54:39):
There's more realistic science behind the Ghostbusters proton packs than
there is this device that he has, and they also
look cooler and like this is and he's able to
sort of use this. It's just it's I mean, I'm
just it's amazing how much money you can make it
in this world with a grift. It's a amazing.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
And what's even more amazing is doctor Voss's patented Find
Your Dead loved One service, the primary sponsor of this
episode of Behind the Bastards and Cava. When doctor Voss
came to me and said, I want to sponsor a
podcast episode on forensic science lies. I said, it seems
kind of weird because we're definitely going to tear you
a new one. But he paid us one hundred and

(55:21):
seventy thousand dollars, so here's amazing.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
He's a swell guy.

Speaker 2 (55:33):
Anyway, we're back, so again, I can't blame Gina for
like wanting to get something positive out of her sister's murder.
But I can blame doctor Voss for, in my opinion,
taking advantage of her and a lot of other grieving people.
Case in point, a shitload of folks who've lost loved
ones on the PCT, people like the family of David O'Sullivan,

(55:53):
a twenty five year old from Ireland who went missing
in the spring of twenty seventeen. Voss scanned for his
body from a helicopter with his labrador and gave GPS
coordinates to where rescuers would find the body. A mountaineer
went to the coordinates and found nothing. Oh Sullivan is
still missing three years later. Again, was still missing three

(56:14):
years later.

Speaker 3 (56:14):
Again. If people out there listening trying to figure out
what this labrador thing is, it's just like a dumb
looking metal box nothing. It's a los of nothing. It's
nothing like how would that? How would from working from
like an inch away? I don't think it would work
much less from a helicopter.

Speaker 2 (56:32):
Yeah, yeah, and yeah, I'm going to quote again from
mother Jones here, and this is them talking to the
family of David O'Sullivan. Voss cost us a lot of
money and gave us false hope, which was much worse.
The Lost Higer's mother, Carmelosa Lovin, wrote in an email,
adding that she now doubts Voss ever found a missing person.
Families are at their most vulnerable at this time, and
we'll try desperate measures. Voss is such a fixture in

(56:56):
the I Lost a loved one on the PCT community
that the first startup again this website has done it
right above him because they feel the need to warn
people in the community about him. Because he's a fucking predator,
is what some people might argue. He cites a patent file,
or the guy who wrote that article in PCT missing
dot Org sites a patent filing for this successor device

(57:17):
to the Labrador, which is called the inquisitor. And I'm
not really curious about what the acronym stands for But
I do want to read this quote from that PCT
Missing article. I've reviewed twenty seven cases Voss worked, and
I can't find a single one where the inquisitor detected
an actual missing person or their remains. I know of
one missing hiker case in which Voss and his device
walked within feet of the remains and totally missed it.

(57:38):
We know this because the missing person was found by
accident many months later, well outside the area detected by
Voss and his inquisitor.

Speaker 3 (57:47):
Yeah, I mean, I mean, you know, the thing is
that he does it once, you know, shame on him.
He makes a living off of it, Shame on us.

Speaker 2 (57:56):
Right, there's a broader problem. This is a systemic issue.
Now that article of that PCT missing article, which again
I would not surprised that this is a community, right,
that there's enough missing people, and that it's enough of
a thing that folks who are particularly really into the
trail do. But I was impressed at like the degree
of rigor in the article that this guy put together

(58:18):
on doctor Voss. It's really quite good. The author of
that talk to doctor Monte Miller, director of Forensic DNA Experts,
to provide an analysis of the patent for the Inquisitor device.
Doctor Miller has a PhD in biochemistry, not anthropology, which
makes him somewhat more qualified to draw conclusions on biochemistry. Quote,

(58:38):
in a six page report, you thoroughly debunked the Inquisitor's
ability to locate dead family members using your fingernail clippings.
That's what Voss was advertising. You give me your fingernails,
and I will find your loved one using my magical gadget.
That's so right for an example of how ridiculous this is,
it's hard to get DNA from fingernail clippings, right Like,

(59:00):
it's not You could do it, but it's not easy,
right Like, it's one of the more difficult things in
DNA related science. You certainly cannot put your finger nail
clippings in a box that then finds your son's body.

Speaker 3 (59:14):
That's just not real. Yeah, I don't like this guy.
I mean, whenever you tell me about these grifters that
are able to pull off these scams allegedly, I don't
know if he listens or if he's latigonist, but like it,

(59:34):
I have. It almost is a part of me. That's
just like, that's pretty I wish I had that confidence.
I wish I had this level of like confidence in
my skills to be like to try and sell something
like this, Like it's kind of inspiring in a weird way.
I hate to admit that it is.

Speaker 2 (59:53):
It's awesome and like the literal sense of that word,
and that you have awe at the audacity of this motherfucker.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
Yeah, it's working. He's like, he's like, yeah, he wouldn't
keep doing it.

Speaker 2 (01:00:05):
He like it may not be working as well. Now
that's a little unclear to me. Sources at the UT
Forensic Anthropology Center say Voss is no longer associated with
their department. The author of that article I cited talk
to a PhD who specializes in light ar. This person
described Voss as predatory. To date, there are no scientific
studies backing at Boss's claims. A person who wrote that

(01:00:27):
article claims he charges three hundred dollars an hour, plus
expenses and a retainer for his services, which is deeply Again,
if you if your fucking kid is missing, you'll do
anything if you can be con Obviously, for his part,
Boss told Mother Jones he's not out to take advantage
of anybody, a statement made almost exclusively by people out

(01:00:48):
to take advantage of other people. He states that his
fee is minimal and that he's worked pro bono in
the past, a statement wonderfully vague enough that it means
almost nothing. He does note that he also operates with
more recognized tools like cadaver dogs and chemical tests. Curious then,
that he makes such a point about his patented body
stiffing machine that no one can seem to prove has

(01:01:10):
been studied in any kind of objective, repeatable way. Eric Bartling,
an anthropology professor who was former president of the American
Bord of Forensic Anthropology, says Voss's services are not scientifically valid.
Helen Gilking, director of the Forensic Anthropology Lab at the
University of North Texas Center for Human Identification, adds part
of the problem has to do that Voss doesn't belong

(01:01:31):
to any of the usual organizations or societies. He's operating
in a society of consumers who have been conditioned by
all sorts of forensic scientific fantasy in the popular media.
As a result, there is no shortage of potential victims.
I don't fully agree with her, because again, he is
associated with some reputable thing like organizations. He's been teaching
cops the fucking body farm. It's not weird that people

(01:01:54):
think he's got qualifications. Part of the issue is that
this is not just a vas thing. Like the whole
field of forensic science, all the different fields of forensic
science are riddled with like issues in adequately determining whether
or not different techniques are valid and repeatable science. This
is a problem again and again. We're not even going

(01:02:16):
to get into it in these episodes because there's so
much else, but like, one of the big findings in
the last couple of decades has been that a huge
amount of what used to be called like arson analysis
like burn analysis, was just wrong. People were convicted all
the fucking time based on an understanding of what sort
of patterns and a fire indicated arson that were not
necessarily indicators of arson that could happen in totally accidental

(01:02:39):
fires and fires that are started electrically. That they were
like this only happens when you pour fuel right was
completely bucked. People went to fucking prison for this shit.
It happened. It's all over the goddamn place, and it's
because once people have the idea to start doing this
as a method of forensic analysis. They just start doing
it in court for money, rather than building up a

(01:03:01):
body of science around it first.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
You know, again, it comes out of like the legal
system and law enforcement, as opposed to coming out of
like the traditional sciences, where they come out of yeah yeah,
fundamental flaws.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Yeah so. And while Voss is a particularly noteworthy example
of the problematic aspects of having little in the way
of objective standards for any kind of practitioners forensic science,
he's not nearly alone. This brings me to doctor Richard
Vorder Bruges, who has used as unparalleled skill and denim
identification to idea bank robber Wilburn mccreeth, who was sentenced

(01:03:37):
to prison for ninety two years. Now, what identification he's
matching like pants and shirts on camera, like the pattern
of creases and folds in them to prove that it's
the same shirt, not just like an identical because obviously
a lot of people buy the same versions of the
same shirt. You have to prove that, like this is

(01:03:58):
the this shirt on camera is the shirt this guy owns, right,
And he's doing that by like doing wrinkle analysis, which.

Speaker 3 (01:04:05):
Is like wow, awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
It's one thing if there's a guy like rob Say
a guy holds up a liquor store and you see
he's wearing a certain shirt with a specific pattern, and
there's three cigarette burns in the shoulder, and you find
this a shirt with the same pattern and cigarette burns
in the same way. That's some evidence, right, that would
definitely be reasonable to introduce, right, Yeah, what he's doing
is much sketchier than this. Right, look at this. There's

(01:04:29):
a photograph of comparison for this bank robbery case where
you can see how kind of unclear the actual clips
from the bank camera are. And you can compare that
with like the pictures they have of the suspect and
his shirt, and it's just a bunch of like arrows
pointing at nothing, Like I can't even see what they're

(01:04:50):
claiming is like the unique wrinkle patterns that prove these
are the same.

Speaker 3 (01:04:56):
So for listeners, what we have on the screen right
now is a bunch of pictures black and white, taking
from surveillance photos of like a plaid shirt. You can't
really tell the color. And there is like, just like
you Robert mentioned, a bunch of arrows literally pointing to
it could be anything, which just random. There's random arrows

(01:05:17):
sort of pointing here and there no discernible like arrangement
in the concept I'm guessing here is like like, for example,
my shirt right now, there's like these folds and wrinkles
around my armpit, for example, Like they would check that,
put an arrow there and be like this fold here
is very specific, which is like, which seems pretty unreproducible

(01:05:37):
to me. This, like I seems like an absolute garbage.

Speaker 4 (01:05:40):
Every guy in Pittsburgh has this shirt.

Speaker 2 (01:05:44):
It's one thing to say, you know, I've done open
source analysis that has been sighted in courts and stuff, right,
and like when you do it, it's stuff like, Okay, well,
this person is wearing a mask, but they have an
article of clothing, and there's another picture of a person
who is wearing the same mask, who has the same
article of clothing, and then a picture of them without
the mask wearing that clothing, and you can also see

(01:06:05):
evidence of like there's this part of a tattoo in
the picture of the person without the mask that is
present in the picture of the person with the mask,
and like you know these other you know, there's a
ring or something that you can see in all these
other pictures, and like we can sort of suggest that
this is the same person in all these pictures, because
these things are really consistent, right, and there's enough of
them that it would be really weird if like that.

(01:06:26):
It's very unlikely that it's like not the same person, right.
Whereas Bruce is just saying, he literally says, based on
the photos I just showed you, there is a one
in six hundred and fifty billion chance that these are
different shirts.

Speaker 3 (01:06:37):
Oh my god, that's where does he get that number from?
Holy hell? What a what a bold statement.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:06:45):
I'm going to need to see your fucking math. I
don't even know math, but I'm going to need to
see you proof that. To me, it's a number calculation, bro.
Pro Publican notes quote there is no body of work,
at least not outside of the FBI on clothing pattern matching.
There's no data available to tailing the number of identical

(01:07:06):
shirts created during manufacturing runs, or how many variations an
examiner should expect to find then a lot of manufactured clothes,
Nor is there any specific training required to turn an
FBI examiner into an expert on clothing features. From what's
been obtained by Pro public La, the only requirement seems
to be a functioning pair of eyes.

Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
Do they even say the brand of this shirt they're
using as an example.

Speaker 2 (01:07:26):
Oh, I'm sure, Yeah, I'm sure they do somewhere. But
like two.

Speaker 4 (01:07:29):
Thousand and four of the Gap, everybody had that shirt.
It's not a specialty shit.

Speaker 2 (01:07:34):
It's like a red plaid shirt shirt.

Speaker 4 (01:07:37):
It's a plaid collar shirt. This is not some specialty item.

Speaker 3 (01:07:41):
Jesus Christ, my god. Now so desperate. We're so desperate.
This is how bad it is, how bad we are
at solving crimes as we are turning to stuff like this.

Speaker 2 (01:07:50):
Yeah, it's amazing stuff. The FBI has claimed in court
filings that patterns of wrinkles and jeans and shirts are
as unique as fingerprints, which really gives up some of
the game here. Fingerprints are accepted as a flawless method
of scientific identification, though, as we started these episodes by saying,
they are not. So if you want to make your
much sketchier tactic look acceptable, you have to tell the

(01:08:12):
jury it's just as reliable as finger printing. Pro Publica continues,
Like anything else, this science is prone to confirmation bias,
but in these cases it's much worse. FBI image examiners
aren't given control images or items to guard against this.
They're only given images and the items investigators believe are evidence,
so it guides examiners to inevitable conclusions. The research tends

(01:08:34):
to be little more than finding ways images and items match,
working backwards from the assumption that the item being examined
as evidence of a criminal act. The entire body of
this quote unquote wrinkle matching science rests on a twenty
plus year old case involving a pair of blue gens.
Let me show you the photographic evidence. Can you even

(01:08:57):
see the fucking wrinkles in these pictures?

Speaker 3 (01:09:00):
Okay? So we are looking at two side by side photos,
very old, grainy, black and white photos.

Speaker 4 (01:09:08):
Yea's supposed to be the same pants? Yes, okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:11):
One is a straight leg geen that's like a stove
pipe style. The other one is like almost a wide
leg or a bootcut gen.

Speaker 4 (01:09:20):
What what? And there are clearly different colors.

Speaker 1 (01:09:23):
I can even tell they're different colors in black and white,
and the denim print is completely different, the stitching is different,
and uh.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
This is all bullshit.

Speaker 3 (01:09:35):
Sorry, I mean like I would. Okay, here's the thing.
If there was some computer analysis that like really honed
in on like a section of like the fiber, and
they said, oh, you could see there there's a problem
here with the stitch. Like the stitch here is a
unique mess up like this is like a one in
a whatever thousand chance of having a mess up like this.

(01:09:56):
Then that sort of makes sense. But literally, this seems
to be a science where it's like, look, the genes
are wrinkled here and here and here, and these genes
over here are also wrinkled in a similar sort of way.
They must be the same person. Like, you know how
pissed I would be if I got sentenced erroneously to
jail because of this, Like it would be even worse

(01:10:17):
than going to jail without doing the crime. It would
be because of this I went to jail. I'd be
so furious.

Speaker 4 (01:10:23):
These are costly different genes. The styles are not the same.

Speaker 1 (01:10:28):
You got street stove pipe and you've got wide leg
boot cut.

Speaker 4 (01:10:33):
What the fuck are we even talking about here? This
is bullshit for a lot of genes. I know what
I'm talking about.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
I will say the good thing is that the field
of wrinkle analysis is not as respected as it once was.

Speaker 4 (01:10:48):
But really, really, because it's based off of this.

Speaker 2 (01:10:52):
Okay, because the innocence projects for folks got a lot
of people's convictions over turned based on like really shoddy
this specifically being very shoddy science, and it's forced the
Justice Department to change their requirements around this. DOJ standards
now mandate that they're scientists and experts, not unequivocally claimed
that fingerprints or bullets or hair analysis can determine which

(01:11:15):
bullet fired a gun, or which hand left a print,
or which had grew a hair quote to the exclusion
of all others. This is the kind of claims that
we're making about stuff like bullet analysis, wrinkle matching that like,
because of my expertise, is like an FBI trained fucking
wrinkle I can these are the same pants to the
exclusion of all of their possibilities. They cannot say that anymore. Right,

(01:11:35):
the DOJ guys, Right, people who are actually working for
the Department of Justice, you know, doing forensic analysis can't.

Speaker 3 (01:11:42):
Create success more. I'm I'm so glad we got that
very basic thing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:46):
Yeah, yeah, so at least at least that's good. So yeah,
you know, there's a lot that's angry, frustrating about this today.
There's more here. I wanted to go into where are
aready running so long? But I do feel like I
would be remiss if I didn't at least let you
know about the latest bullshit forensic science that I came across,

(01:12:07):
which is exciting field of nine to one to one
call analysis. This is the result of a deputy police chief,
Tracy Harpster, from Dayton, Ohio, who had no particular experience
solving murders prior to attending a course at the FBI
Academy in two thousand and four. He made a teacher
there that he thought was fucking gray, and he decides

(01:12:30):
to go get his master's degree at the U of Cincinnati,
and his thesis involves he listens to one hundred recordings
of nine to one one calls. Half are from innocent
people and half are from people who were guilty of
the climes crimes they were reporting. He then analyzed the
calls for clues on the cues guilty people gave off. Now,
this study is peer reviewed, but it is a peer

(01:12:51):
reviewed it's labeled in the where it was published as
exploratory research, so it's not When I say it's a
peer reviewed study, that doesn't mean that a bunch of
scientists to read this is a great way to determine
whether or not people making a nine to one one
call committed a crime. They agreed that, like, this is
interesting and more research should be done, right, And in fact,
one of the people who helped him with this has
gone on to be like, I think what he is

(01:13:12):
doing is not acceptable now because what he now does
is teach cops all around the country for huge amounts
of money how to tell with people are guilty based
on things in nine one one calls. What kinds of things? Well,
if you use the word please, you're probably guilty. In
a nine one one call. If you say huh in
response to a dispatcher's question, that's an indicator of guilt.

(01:13:35):
If you say something like please help me, that could
mean that you're guilty.

Speaker 3 (01:13:39):
Please, huh and please help me are like three of
my favorite things to say.

Speaker 2 (01:13:43):
Yeah, it's it's cool.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
I want to I want to.

Speaker 2 (01:13:46):
Quote from a pro publica analysis that's just fucking infuriating.
This is a Colorado sheriff's deputy who asks Harpster to
analyze the nine one one call of a widow suspective
of murdering your husband.

Speaker 3 (01:13:57):
Quote.

Speaker 2 (01:13:58):
The widow said the word blood for a example, and
that's a guilty indicator. Bleeding, however, is not she said
somebody at different points, which shows a lack of commitment.
Witnesses to a crime scene should be able to report
their observations clearly. Harpster and Adams wrote, she was inappropriately
polite because she said I'm sorry and thank you. She
interrupted herself, which wastes valuable time and may add confusion.

(01:14:21):
She tried to divert attention by saying, God, who would
do this? Harpster and Adams commented, this is a curious
and unexpected question.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
This is fucking insane. Yeah, this is like nineteen eighty
four level of like.

Speaker 2 (01:14:37):
This guy, this widow gets convicted. Yeah, maybe she did it.
There was other evidence, you know, but this is some
of the evidence they convict her on. And that makes
me very uneasy because this shit is bullcrap.

Speaker 3 (01:14:48):
Right. The whole idea that like, witnesses.

Speaker 2 (01:14:50):
To a crime scene should be able to report their
observations clearly. Have you fucking met a crime scene witness?
Have you watched have you talked to someone who just
saw a violent committed?

Speaker 1 (01:15:01):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:15:01):
They're bad at doing that they're terrible, I mean understandably,
so that's like what they've just experienced. I mean it
would be like there's a part of me I get
why all these things work because they're all fun. Like
it's all fun. Like this is like, right, wouldn't it
be fun to be able to detect someone's line based
on like some subtle cues like that, you know, but.

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
Cops love being able to take like a five day
course and say, now it can tell it when a
nine to one one call is a lie by a murderer.

Speaker 3 (01:15:31):
You know, these skills, It seems like it would be
a lot of fun. I get why people like it,
but like we have to take we have to learn
as a country to take a step back. Just take
a step back every now and then and look at
what we're doing. This might not.

Speaker 2 (01:15:46):
He is taught police and continues to teach police officers.
I think twenty six states at this point. Twenty researchers
twenty researchers from seven federal government agencies, universities, and advocacy
groups have tested his methods against other samples of nine
to one one calls to see if the guilty indicators
that he points out do correlate with guilt, and these

(01:16:08):
studies have consistently found no relationship for most of the indicators.

Speaker 3 (01:16:12):
Oh wow.

Speaker 2 (01:16:13):
Two separate studies FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit experts warrened law
enforcement officers that their results contradicted harpsters and police probably
shouldn't be using this shit. Despite that, the FBI repeatedly
suggests his like like recommends him as an expert in cases.

Speaker 3 (01:16:30):
So it's good, amazing, It's amazing again, no matter how
dumb it seems to be, it's just these new levels
of dumb that I discover.

Speaker 2 (01:16:41):
Yeah, I love it. I'm sure we'll be learning more
about this guy. Pro public as seems to be, has
been reporting quite a bit on him lately, So that's good. Anyway.
Don't call nine one one.

Speaker 3 (01:16:56):
Really, I'm not sure I can back that one.

Speaker 1 (01:17:00):
Normally, when we do an episode and it's I can
shut it off in my brain right away, because we
do so much of what we do. I'm going to
be mad about the gene thing for a really long time.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
It's it's it's good stuff. Look, folks, if there's a
lesson here again, never call nine one one. Always take
justice into your own hands. That's the safe way to
do this, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:17:27):
Yeah, No, I didn't say that. I didn't say that.
The doctor didn't say that. The doctor that's the podcast
didn't say that. The reverend, the one true reverend doctor
on this podcast did not say that.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
Mm hmm, well I don't know. Uh. What I will
say is, if you call nine one one, don't use
the word blood.

Speaker 3 (01:17:44):
Yeah, I don't say please, don't please, you mean, don't hesitate.
Just start yelling at them. I guess that's the only
way to do it.

Speaker 2 (01:17:52):
Yeah, yeah, atonal shrieking.

Speaker 4 (01:17:56):
Yeah, there you go a.

Speaker 2 (01:17:58):
Shriek atonally and get them your address. That's it. Cool stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:18:05):
I am fantastic.

Speaker 4 (01:18:07):
I'm mad.

Speaker 2 (01:18:09):
Well, that's my job done. That was fine, everybody.

Speaker 3 (01:18:12):
That was fun.

Speaker 2 (01:18:14):
Doctor Hoda anywhere people can find you.

Speaker 3 (01:18:17):
Please listen to my podcast. I like it when people listen.
I enjoy that very much. It's called the House of Pod.
It is a fun medical podcast. And I know you're
thinking you probably wouldn't like a medical podcast, but you will,
you will, and you will listen. You will like it.
I think it's a good chance you might enjoy it.
Thank you so much for having me on, and I
really appreciate This is always so much fun for me.

Speaker 2 (01:18:38):
And look, folks out there, if you're a lawyer, a prosecutor,
DA or whatever. I have started advertising my services as
a uniquely skilled guilt science expert, which basically means you
pay me fifteen hundred dollars and I'll look at a
guy and go, oh, yeah, that motherfucker did it. And
I'll do that in the court room. You know.

Speaker 3 (01:19:00):
So when this episode ends, can we just do a
quick round of two truths and a lie and see
if we can guess who's lying to lose it?

Speaker 2 (01:19:07):
There we go.

Speaker 3 (01:19:08):
We can even do it on air too, But I
really want to see if I can guess when you
guys are lying.

Speaker 2 (01:19:12):
Okay, Okay, let's do it. Let's do it, Cove. That
seems like a fun way to end our episode. Okay, okay,
in law.

Speaker 3 (01:19:19):
Come come a little closer to the screen. I want
to see if the facial micro expressions.

Speaker 2 (01:19:23):
Expressions sut me. Okay, move my window over so I'm
looking directly at it.

Speaker 3 (01:19:28):
Okay, perfect, now, Robert, please tell me if you if
you would, I'm gonna ask you a couple of questions
and I want two of them to be true and
one of them to be a lie. God, what was
the name of the street you grew up on? Seeger?
That's true?

Speaker 2 (01:19:49):
No, it's not. Dam absolutely a lie. All right, I
don't even remember this name. I mean it actually might
be you true because I have no idea what street
I grew up on, Like it depends on what do
you even mean by that? Like I've lived in so
many places as a kid, I remember like a couple
of the streets.

Speaker 3 (01:20:09):
Well, you know, I guess it's not an exact science.

Speaker 2 (01:20:13):
What we're learning.

Speaker 1 (01:20:16):
You asked me a question.

Speaker 3 (01:20:17):
Okay, okay, Sophie. How many times have you seen the
movie Titanic? Yeah? Look at me when you answer this
that you can't look down like you're doing. That looks
suspicious and I think you're lying already. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:20:30):
Yeah, we should have asked her.

Speaker 4 (01:20:32):
I'm counting. And now are we talking ever?

Speaker 3 (01:20:35):
Or whoa my goodness? In the last year, I guess
I don't know. Yeah, twice, that's obviously a lie. No
one's watched that Titanic.

Speaker 4 (01:20:46):
Watched and I watched it twice. That was the truth.
I would never lie to you.

Speaker 2 (01:20:49):
I would never see I thought it was a lie
because I assumed you'd watched it a lot more.

Speaker 1 (01:20:54):
No, no, I thought, once in theaters and what's that home?
Once in theaters on the anniversary, and it's at home.
I would never lie to you. You are my friend.

Speaker 3 (01:21:03):
Okay, you're right, this is this is.

Speaker 4 (01:21:08):
Robert would lie to you to prove his friendship.

Speaker 2 (01:21:10):
Oh, just for fun, just as a bit sometimes.

Speaker 3 (01:21:14):
Yeah, I mean, and uh, I am really good at
detecting what people lie. Is when everyone thinks and nobody.

Speaker 2 (01:21:22):
Is yeah, nobody. Nobody's very good at it.

Speaker 3 (01:21:25):
Nobody.

Speaker 2 (01:21:27):
That part's okay, because none of human civilization would work
if we were all good at telling when we were
being lied to.

Speaker 1 (01:21:33):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (01:21:34):
So, so much of peace and tranquility in civilization relies
upon us not catching every little lie somebody tells us.

Speaker 3 (01:21:43):
Oh my god, if you could read people's minds, it
would be absolute chaos. Yeah, absolutely, things would be terrible.

Speaker 1 (01:21:50):
And tend this out, I would like to plug that.
We have a new show launching momentarily on cools one Media,
hosting by Jamie Loftus. It's a weekly podcast called sixteenth
Minute of Fame.

Speaker 4 (01:22:02):
Look for that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:03):
Speaking of failures in the criminal justice system, Jamie still
has not been brought to justice for those murders.

Speaker 3 (01:22:09):
And I even I.

Speaker 2 (01:22:12):
Forgot the name of the city I like about it,
Grand Rapids.

Speaker 3 (01:22:16):
Oh, I thought it was Gary, Indiana for some reason.

Speaker 2 (01:22:18):
Gary Indiana. Maybe she did in Gary, Indiana. Next week
we're our investigation into Jamie's crimes and Gary will.

Speaker 3 (01:22:26):
Have pursueddor dowsing for bodies.

Speaker 2 (01:22:31):
Yeah, get doctor Voss on the case.

Speaker 4 (01:22:33):
I don't know. I need to see all of Jamie's genes.

Speaker 2 (01:22:38):
We got to do a gene and how this Jamie?
Make sure the creases don't match too much.

Speaker 4 (01:22:51):
Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media.
Or more from cool Zone Media.

Speaker 1 (01:22:56):
Visit our website cool zonemedia dot com, or check us
out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you
get your podcasts.