Maria Haymandou’s latest blog post!
Marshall Frank, shown here, is now a successful author of crime dramas.
I recently came across an article where now-retired Miami-area homicide detective Marshall Frank talks about the best ways to get murderers to confess to murders. This reminds me a lot of the HBO program “True Detective” that I’ve been watching recently, where Matthew McConaughey’s character, a pessimistic homicide detective in rural Louisiana named Rust Cohle, is known throughout the police force for his ability to get people to confess to murders. Even though it’s a very small part of the show, there are a couple scenes where Rust smoothly coaxes murder confessions out of several suspects.
In the article, Frank talks about how he got Paul Eugene Rowles, a convicted murderer and predator who was arrested in 1972, to confess to strangling his neighbor, Linda Fida. How did Frank get Rowles to confess? He simply made friends with him. And it took just about half an hour. Sitting extremely close to Rowles, Frank would lean toward him during the interrogation. He worked to seem like he was interested in him. There was another cop in the room while the interrogation went down, but he just stood there and stayed quiet. After a while, Rowles blathered the confession out.
According to Frank, being able to successfully interrogate suspects one-on-one requires patience. You can’t come across as if you’re personally involved, or like you’re mad, angry, impatient or putting on pressure. According to Frank, the classic good-cop/bad-cop scenario that occurs in the movies isn’t what happens in the real world. Frank’s interrogation methods can be broken down into three ideas: firstly, you need to gain their confidence, respect and cooperation. No matter how horrible, despicable or dangerous the person across from you is, you need to be able to make friends with them. Second, you need to be able to take your time. At the beginning of the interrogation, don’t even mention what you’re there for. Wait as long as needed. The idea is to get the person talking and feeling good about talking to you. And finally, you need to work your way into whatever the issue is. And next thing you know, the person is making a confession. According to Frank, that’s exactly how it worked.
Through his 30 years as a police officer, Frank claims he never arrested the wrong person in a case. However, he did come close one time: he one time questioned a man whose aunt claims he assaulted her. The suspect was adamant about his innocence, like most guilty people are, but Frank had a hunch, and it turned out that the aunt had made the entire story up.
Due to his extensive career, Frank has certain thoughts about the American justice system. According to him, public defender resources are overburdened, which sometimes contributes to less-than-fair circumstances. It’s a really uneven system, where some people can afford a good lawyer while others can only afford public defenders. One public defender he knows compared keeping up with the caseload to the classic scene in “I Love Lucy”, where Lucille Ball can’t keep up with the conveyor belt. Frank also feels strongly about the death penalty. He finds it unacceptable that there are probably countless innocent people who have been executed. He doesn’t feel that society can sacrifice innocent people once in a while so that they can get all of the guilty ones. Frank thinks that society should consider alternative punishments for dangerous criminals.
Maria Haymandou 