When investigators interrogate a suspect in a crime, they have to pay careful attention to the process. Months or years of work on a case can be lost when just one interrogation is run without forethought and preparation.
I’ve conducted a few interrogations; profilers are sometimes called upon to do this. But most often, their job is to help select and prepare investigators from local law enforcement or state or federal agencies — often other FBI agents — to question the suspect. By formulating an approach that zeroes in on the suspect’s weakness, profilers augment the investigators’ knowledge of the case with a script and setting for the interrogation — what I call “staging.”
My first opportunity to stage an interrogation came in December 1979, when an FBI agent in Georgia called me for assistance. He was investigating the rape and murder of 12-year-old Mary Frances Stoner, who had disappeared the previous week after a school bus driver dropped her off 100 yards from her front door.
Darrell Gene Devier, who’d been trimming trees in the area the week before, drove up just after Mary Frances got off the bus. He forced her into his car and took her to the isolated, wooded area where her body was found soon after she was killed. He raped her in the car and was surprised to find that she wasn’t going along with it. She struggled and begged and cried, ruining the fantasy he had constructed of what it would be like to have sex with her.
He couldn’t let her go
He let her out of the car and told her to get dressed, but had decided he couldn’t let her go. When she turned her back to him, he began strangling her, knocking her out while pushing her to the ground. But he wasn’t strong enough to choke her to death, so he lifted a 50-pound rock and dropped it onto her head again and again until she was dead.
There were no witnesses. How did we know what had happened? By telephone, I was given descriptions of the crime scene, autopsy results and the victim’s personality. From this information, I constructed a probable scenario for the crime and a profile of the unknown subject, or UNSUB, which turned out to be very accurate. I’ll elaborate on this aspect of profiling, which is probably the most well-known part of the job, in the next column.
The police brought Devier in, but he was uncooperative, cocky and evasive. His polygraph results were inconclusive. He felt confident he could beat the system. The way we staged his interrogation was going to be very important.
So I went to work and came up with a plan.
Setting the stage
First, a team made up of both local police officers and FBI agents from the Atlanta field office would conduct the interview, which would intimidate Devier and let him know this was a big deal.
Second, the team would question Devier in the evening, in a room with dim lighting. The setting would relax Devier, which would make him vulnerable to a key stressor that would be placed in the room (keep reading).
Third, stacks of overflowing folders with his name on them would be placed in the room. Even if the folders were filled with blank paper, Devier would believe that this was a thorough investigation.
Fourth, they would bring up the issue of spattered blood. I knew from other blunt-force-trauma cases that the murderer would’ve gotten blood on his clothes and hands. If Devier was their man, he would respond strongly to the mention of this.
Fifth, and most important, the bloody rock from the crime scene — the murder weapon — would be placed a few feet from Devier, 45 degrees below his line of sight. If he was guilty, I knew he’d never be able to keep his eyes off it. The interrogators wouldn’t mention the rock at first, but would allow Devier to sweat and sneak glances at it while they talked about other aspects of the crime.
Transfixed by a bloody rock
The rock was his weakness, the key stressor he’d be unable to ignore.
Finally, I warned the interrogators that they’d have to sink to Devier’s level. They would need to project blame onto the victim by suggesting that she’d seduced him. Allowing Devier a face-saving scenario was their only chance of getting a confession because Devier knew that Georgia is a death penalty state.
The instant Devier entered the interrogation room, he was transfixed by the rock. He started sweating, breathing hard and cowering. As planned, interrogators projected blame onto the victim. Devier got really quiet. An innocent man will scream and protest, but a guilty man will listen to what you have to say if you’ve surprised him with a chance to save face.
Then they moved the rock, placing it on the table right in front of Devier. They told him they knew he was guilty, but that they believed he’d only planned to rape the victim, not kill her. They said others thought the killing was premeditated, but they knew better and had spoken with the district attorney. They said they understood that he’d been frightened and acted suddenly, otherwise he would’ve brought a real weapon instead of using … a rock.
Boom. Devier confessed to the rape and murder of Mary Frances as well as another rape the previous year. He was executed in 1995.
