Can trying to read people’s body language make investigators worse at finding the truth? Veteran interrogator and trainer Stan B. Walters, known as “the Lie Guy” (thelieguy.com) and author of “Principles of Kinesic Interview and Interrogation,” explains why he moved away from the nonverbal behavior ideas he once taught—and why he now focuses on listening to what people say. We discuss his and others’ research on telling lies from truth in real criminal interrogations, why bad ideas about nonverbal behavior and aggressive interviewing tactics persist in police training, and how investigators can accidentally feed suspects information that “contaminates” the interview and makes their job harder. Stan shares stories of an interview that unexpectedly uncovered a serial killer and a murder-attempt survivor whose important detail was missed because nobody asked the right questions. We explore what actually matters when listening to people: looking for gaps in people’s stories, thinking about how logical and verifiable their stories are, and more.
A transcript and other related resources are farther down below.
Episode links:
- YouTube (includes video)
- Apple Podcasts
- Spotify
Resources related to or mentioned in this talk:
- Stan Walters website
- Stan Walter’s research:
- Previous episode on science-based interview techniques
- Cognitive Credibility Assessment
- ACID, Assessment Criteria Indicative of Deception
- Previous episode with Tim Levine, whose “bad liars” idea I reference (recommend reading his book Duped, which goes into detail on this)
TRANSCRIPT
(transcripts are generated automatically and will contain errors)
Stan Walters: I was interviewing a guy. He’s a, he was a rapist up in Baton Rouge. They asked me to come in. It was on cr- New Year’s holidays. Said, “Sure, I’ll come up.” I was in Kentucky. And all I was talking to him about was one victim who tried, who had escaped from him… I hit a spot about his relationship with, with women, and his head dropped, and he put his hands in his face. I said, “He’s– Oh, something’s coming. Tell me what happened, Danny.” He gave up a 16-year-old unsolved homicide in Texas that nobody knew he was connected to. When I got done, when they finished with him, he had 16 homicides over 16 years. He was a serial killer. They executed him in Texas about eight years ago Say, beautiful thing, I didn’t have anything to contaminate him with.
Zach Elwood: That was a clip from my talk with Stan B. Walters. Stan has more than 40 years experience in criminal investigation and interrogation areas, and he’s also done research into nonverbal and verbal behavior at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Stan goes by the nickname “the Lie Guy” and you can learn about him at his site thelieguy.com.
I’m Zach Elwood and the host of the People Who Read People podcast, which can you can learn more about at behavior-podcast.com. You can also learn about my poker tells books and videos at readingpokertells.com. I got interested in talking to Stan because I stumbled across a book of his from 2003, a second edition of a book, actually, that was titled Principles of Kinesic Interview and Interrogation.
I’ll read a little bit from that book’s description:
How do you interpret a person’s behavior during their interview? Some people say it’s an innate quality that can’t be taught. But anyone who’s read Stan Walters’ Principles of Kinesic Interview and Interrogation knows that is FALSE. The overwhelming success of the first edition and the numerous success stories credited to the book prove that the art of kinesic interview, or behavioral analysis, is indeed learnable, and Walters shows you how to master it.
It says that what’s new in this edition is, amongst other things:
· 50% more high quality photos depicting various nonverbal symptoms
And just a note that if you’re listening to this on audio platforms, this episode is also on youtube and includes video, and I’m right now going to be showing some pictures from the book. I’ll just flip to a few pages at random here.
So here we’ve got a, uh, a picture of a guy picking his hands. It says, “This subject is showing general stress behavior as he picks at his fingers and fingernails during his interview.” Turn to another page here. Got a picture of a woman touching her face. It says, “Subject showing negation behavior of covering the face by playing with her nose.” A similar picture on the other page, “Negation behavior by a subject who is pinching his nose between his fingers.” Here’s a woman of a– a picture of a woman. It says, “A female subject exhibiting the stress behavior of lip licking, usually due to a dry mouth, but it can also be a stalling behavior. Notice the subject smiling at the same time.” Image below that one says, “Subject showing the results of stress by licking his lips.” Flip to another one here. There’s one of a guy with a hand on his face. It says, “This subject is blocking the mouth in a negation behavior by playing with his mustache.” Another picture says, “Negation behavior by subject who is partially covering the mouth with his hand.” Another image says, “This subject is holding his bottom lip in his hand Another one says, “Aggressive hard eye contact by subject. Notice the hand also blocking the mouth.” Another one says, “Male subject demonstrating aggressive hard eyes. Notice the head position leaning away from the interviewer in an aversion behavior.” This one says, “Male subject breaking eye contact by looking down at his fingers as he plays with them.” This one says, “Subject showing negation behavior by covering his entire face, including the eyes, nose, and mouth.” Anyway, um, you get the idea there.
Now the book also includes other things besides a focus on nonverbal behavior; it actually has some interesting and I think accurate stuff on verbal content patterns, but I was just focusing here on the nonverbal behavior section.
So I got curious to talk to Stan about this book, and about his views on nonverbal behavior and the practical use of it in high-stakes, real-world settings. I didn’t actually know what Stan’s current views on nonverbal behavior were; as you’ll hear, his views on that subject have changed a whole lot. But I didn’t know that when I reached out to him. I’ve mostly these days been doing interviews as research for a book I’m working on, which will be titled Read People For Real, and as part of that I’m up for talking to anyone, and learning about their points of views, no matter if I agree with everything they say, or not. Basically I’m just trying to delve into certain areas I’m curious about and where I’m trying to understand why people think what they do. And in this case what drew me to Stan was on the topic of: why do so many law enforcement practitioners believe that nonverbal behavior is so meaningful and useful in interrogation and investigative settings? Why do they believe those things despite what the research and evidence tells us about the practical value of nonverbal behavior in the area of deception?
Stan has a long career, and again if you want to learn about him, go to his site thelieguy.com, but I’ll read a few things that he mentions on this site:
40+ Years — Investigative interviewing and interrogation experience
50,000+ Hours — Presenting investigative interview skills
1,500+ — Videotaped offender and detainee interviews in 40 correctional institutions
Stan’s instruction has supported counterintelligence and field operations during the Gulf War and other high-stakes deployments, including advanced behavioral skills development for military and security personnel preparing for real-world operations in hostile environments.
Peer-Reviewed Research — Published research and presentations to the American Psychological Association.
For the entry for this episode on my site behavior-podcast.com I’ll include some links to the research and some of the other resources Stan mentions in our talk.
Okay here’s the talk with Stan B. Walters…
Zach Elwood: Hi, Stan. Thanks for joining me.
Stan Walters: Thanks for inviting me. Looking forward to our conversation.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, me too. Thank you. So I was curious, you know, I first learned of you when I found this, uh, Kinesic Interviewing book that you had written. Do you wanna talk a little bit about how you came to write that book and what your interest was in that area?
Stan Walters: That was when we were still doing hieroglyphics, right? That’s been so long ago, Zach. And that, that, that was the first thing that would caught my attention was your interest in that text. Is it with the red cover or the black cover?
Zach Elwood: I think it was a- You remember
Stan Walters: offhand?
Zach Elwood: I think it was a red cover.
Stan Walters: Red cover.
Okay, that’s the second one.
Zach Elwood: Okay.
Stan Walters: That was just at the beginning of my transformation away from a lot of the body language materials. I had– was involved in some research at John Jay College in New York with Dr. Martha Davis and some folks with the State Department, Defense Department, and the university there.
And that’s where the school, Levinov– Burton Levinov School of Modern Dance Studies, and they started looking at body language in terms of therapy and treatment, psychotherapy and so forth, for the therapist. So that’s where their interest was, and they came up with some of the funding. Martha was one of the profilers for NYPD.
We had to connect one of the sergeants there who was trained in profiling. That’s where the research came. I’d already started having some reservations about body language because– and some of the thoughts that you had were just the same parallel thoughts that I had, you know Is this just somebody stressed out because of the interview or the situation, or is this the victim who’s reliving it, or is it deception?
And I said, “You know, if it’s that many variables, then we’re losing our objective bias if we try to pick one or the other,” ’cause then we go in with a mindset. You know, if you think you’re gonna see a chicken, you’re gonna see a chicken, you know?
Zach Elwood: Right. Confirmation
Stan Walters: bias. And I was really worried about that.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Stan Walters: And some of our first numbers that came out… And now the book was right in between that-
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm …
Stan Walters: segment. It was written just a little bit before our data came out.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Was that, like, early 2000s, somewhere
Stan Walters: around there? That’d be really good, right, right. Yeah, yeah. And I think it finally, if I’m… You might look at the copyright date.
I think it was 2001, I think is when it came out.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: Something along that line. We started our research in, like, ’97- Hmm … ’98. So I’d already pared back some of the body language.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: One of the things that was interesting, and I, I think you picked up on one of your conversations with one of your other guests, reading body language is very labor intensive.
And if you think of the mi- you know, when people talk about a one-track mind- Sure … there’s a lot to that. And what we found, we had five people that watched… Now, we took live cases, which is the first this had been done in research. I’d already been doing visits to prisons, doing proof of concept, interviewing inmates, and videotaping them.
Dr. Davis, Martha Davis, liked that idea, and so other studies in deception had been college students. You know, “Come tomorrow morning, we’ll pay you 50 bucks. Lie, don’t get caught.” You know? There’s no jeopardy in that. So, uh, she worked with NYPD and Dr. and Ray Pierce, and she got 37, if I remember, videotaped interrogations of live cases.
Robbery, rape, murder, attempted murder, et cetera, burglary, all recorded. We interviewed the prosecutors, interviewed the detectives, looked at the forensics. So if a guy was asked in the interview, for example, “What’d you do with the gun?” He said, “I
Zach Elwood: threw
Stan Walters: it on the roof,” let’s say. We could prove through forensics that was a lie or the truth.
So we had ground truth or deception markers. Martha trained the body language people, I trained the speech people. So the body language people listened or watched silent tape, and they cataloged answers by crossing arms and legs, you know, the whole repertoire, right? My folks were looking at memory, uh, lapses and other verbal cues and repeating questions, that type of stuff.
Yeah. You know, trust me, believe that stuff, right?
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: And the, the verbal people won out every time.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Stan Walters: They scored higher.
Zach Elwood: I’d imagine.
Stan Walters: This interesting thing that I was talk- like with the, the, the mindset, the launch, uh, one train of thought, it only took, for every two minutes of tape, it took an hour combined time for the observers to analyze it all.
It took the body language people 45 minutes of work. The speech people only took 15 minutes, and of those two, the speech people scored higher every time than the body language people did.
Zach Elwood: Just a quick edit here. I’m cutting out a little bit of Stan’s explanation just due to wanting to make it more explicitly clear and adding some context. Stan here talked about the findings in a 2006 research paper, which was titled “Judging the Credibility of Criminal Suspect Statements: Does Mode of Presentation Matter?” and which he worked on with his colleagues Martha Davis and Keith Marcus. That study found that the people examining the audio-only interviews got like 62% accuracy compared to like 55% accuracy for those studying both the video and the audio. Another kind of interesting finding that I saw when reading that study was that the people who only read cleaned-up transcripts, which removed uhs and ums and verbal stumbles and such, did like 10% worse at judging truth from lies than those who could hear the actual audio. Again, though, these are all small numbers and deviations and there can be a lot of variance in these studies, but those were just a couple things that stood out as interesting. Back to the talk.
Stan Walters: So that’s where I’m going, “Okay, so my gut instinct’s tell- telling me something right here.” So I started sidetracking a lot of the verbal stuff, and it was barely some marginal-
Zach Elwood: Hmm …
Stan Walters: that was, that would barely make it in, 52, 54%.
So it’s still not much better than a flip of a coin.
Zach Elwood: And, and you were finding that when you did that research that the people looking at only the body language type stuff were still around that- Right … like 55% kind of marker, right? Mm-hmm. Which is what- Yeah … a lot of the research shows for non-verbal deception detection.
Yeah.
Stan Walters: Yeah. And it still is now. If you, if you’ve read, uh, Bella DePaulo-
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm …
Stan Walters: and, and she would be somebody good to talk to. Done a lot of body language research. She did a meta-analysis that had 24,683 something samples. Massive, massive meta study. Average on body language was no better than 52%.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: And some of these were self-proclaimed experts who had done it a lot.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Stan Walters: Yeah. So I’m sit and think, “Okay, so we’re killing ourselves here.” And I, as I was working cases, I was beginning to realize there was more value in hearing than watching.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: Now, parallel to this, you know there’s a very accusatory style of interview.
You know, we confront the person, “You’re a liar, we know about… We know what happened,” et cetera. Then there’s a narrative basis form that sort of come out of Giesie Gudjonsson around the sa- and Aldert Vrij around about ’82, ’84, about the same period of time, that those interviews produced a lot of anxiety, and there was less information.
The admission and confession rate was lower, and there was a higher risk of contaminated and false confession statements with that accusatory style interview. So in that, that red book, I just shifted to a narrative form that Gudjonsson would talk about.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: Uh, orientation, they had different labels.
Orientation, narration, cross-examination, resolution. So let’s, let’s pretend for your witness stand, okay? Uh, “Your Honor, this is Joe Smerbler. He’s an expert in arson investigation, et cetera.” You introduce, that’s the orientation. So you, like lawyers, you enact with the jury and say, “We appreciate you coming.”
You develop the e- the ethos, the connection. ‘Cause if you mistreat people, you know, you’re not gonna get much help out of it, right? Then the attorney would say to you on, on the stand, “Mr. Walters, can you tell us what happened on June 2nd when you were on patrol?” That’s a narrative. Instead of saying, “Mr.
Walters, is it true on June 2nd you’re at the corner of Walk and Don’t Walk at 3:00 AM, you saw a white 1969 Ford Econoline van traveling eastbound in the westbound lane, lights off, swerving suddenly, sideswiped several vehicles, crashed through the median, and ran through the front window of Best Buy?”
Zach Elwood: Yeah, leading.
Stan Walters: The counsel’s gonna object-
Zach Elwood: Yeah …
Stan Walters: testifying for the witness.
Zach Elwood: Yeah
Stan Walters: So it became apparent to me that accusatory approach was contaminating a lot of statements, and that drew my interest. About that time was our false confession cases, that Michael Crowe, for example, was one of the first ones when DNA started being used.
Zach Elwood: Mm.
Stan Walters: And so I was at that apex where all this data’s coming in, said, “Boy, we have been really missing it.”
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: And I’ve, uh, I’ve col- I’ve seen what you’ve done. You’ve probably got a stack of, of research papers you’ve read through and-
Zach Elwood: Yeah, trying to make sense of it. Yeah …
Stan Walters: you know, when the ball game is at halftime and the score is crummy, you start reading research papers.
Yeah. I have like… I counted the other day, I have, like, 800 papers that I’ve collected and read and used for reference in my bibliography when I teach now.
Zach Elwood: Well, yeah, you’re an interesting guy to talk to because I feel like there’s few people that talk openly about that transition from, like, the, the heavy body language focus- Mm-hmm
back, you know, which was common back then, you know. We- Sure … a- a- and to the, to the modern, uh, you know, era where it’s less emphasized and, and more criti- criticized. So it’s really interesting and, like, yeah, even in that book of yours, the, ’cause I think I had, like you said, the second edition. Right. I could, I could tell you massively de-emphasized the body language.
It was in there, but it was still, like, you led with what people were talking about, and then you- Right … went into the body language. So even that alone was interesting to me because I, from the title I had, I had imagined it was mostly- Sure … body language because of the kinesic thing. Mm-hmm. And I was like, “Oh, he’s, he’s really de-emphasizing it.”
So I not- I, I definitely noticed that and I thought it was interesting. So hearing you tell the backstory w- is interesting, yeah. Uh-
Stan Walters: So I’ve been on the, kinda like this journey, just as you have, and it’s what’s ex- excited me about seeing your journey as you’re studying and reading some of your thoughts.
You’re headed that same, along that same parallel path where I am- Mm-hmm … and have been. Uh- Mm-hmm. For sure … of course, Ekman came along with microexpressions, which was interesting But there was never any follow-up.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. I’m cur- well, that’s a whole bucket of worms ’cause yeah, I haven’t seen any I, I’ve seen evidence against the microexpressions stuff.
I don’t, I don’t believe there’s much there, especially, I mean, especially if we’re talking the idea that, you know, for deception detection. I, you know, it seems like there’s- Yeah … good evidence against it being useful for that, but yeah.
Stan Walters: Yeah. You know, you know when that really first jumped out? That’s when, uh, Susan Smith had driven her car into a lake with the kids, and everybody immediately was using microexpressions, watching her cry but not cry, et cetera, and her husband.
That was right in the cusp of that case, and Gary Condit was right along in that same time also.
Zach Elwood: Right. It’s like, I actually was just watching the show Lie To Me yesterday as part of research. Uh-huh. And they, they had used that Susan S- they, you know, th- there’s a few cases that people love to use to try to support some of these ideas, which to me is like, getting back to what you started talking about, it’s like, sure, you can find a few interesting things in the body language and facial expression things, but like, even for those cases, it’s like, what’s so much more important is what they’re actually saying, right?
It’s like Yeah. Uh, so yeah, to your point, and, and I think you, I think I read this in your book too, it’s like, I’m pretty sure it was in your book, where, where you emphasize, hey, these things take a really long time to analyze, you know, the facial expression and body language stuff, to like parse what’s going on with it, and then to add to it, it’s like much, you know, obviously much less, uh, meaningful than what people say.
So it’s like you’re, you’re focusing on the less important thing, and it’s taking more mental effort to even focus on that thing too, right? So y- it’s not a good combo in that sense. Yeah. Yeah.
Stan Walters: Well, and then- ‘Cause I’m excited for your growth pattern. I’m seeing it where you’re paralleling where I got, got to where I am now.
The idea of what’s some of the problems with false confessions, uh, there was a l- a law enforcement interview training company, and several, more than two handfuls of their students have told me that in that class they tell them there was no such thing as a false confession. An innocent person would never confess, and if they did, it’s their fault or they’re guilty of something else.
Innocence Project did a study t- and I, I don’t, I … The, think the number’s around this, 240, 270 cases of wrongful conviction where there was a false confession that DNA proved that person was innocent. Peer-reviewed science, and yet a law enforcement company training law enforcement agencies still today-
Zach Elwood: Still today
Stan Walters: today, and says there is no such thing as a false confession.
Zach Elwood: I guess you don’t wanna say who they are. We don’t wanna, uh-
Stan Walters: No, I wanna keep my house. But we found there’s three factors that you’re fitting with. There’s first confirmation bias, and whether I’m thinking it’s the witness or the victim or the suspect, and body language feeds that bias ’cause we misread.
Once we think, “Aha, I know you’re lying because you covered your mouth or crossed your arms or looked up to the right or left,” or whatever, right? We decide, well, he’s got to be guilty. Well, that creates a bias in the mind of the interviewer.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: Of those 200 and odd cases in that study, confirmation bias was demonstrated in 100% of the cases- Hmm
by the interviewer.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: The next thing was, uh, contamination. So an accusatory interview, “We know you did this. We know you moved the body. We know that, uh, we’ve got you on videotape,” and feeding facts. I’ve c- consulted on a case, a death penalty case on the molestation of a child down here in Florida, and was asked by the defense to look at the reliability, that’s the term I use now, how reliable is his statement?
The detective told him, “Your two daughters have told us very similar stories, and they prob- they didn’t talk to each other.” I’m thinking, “That’s BS.” “And we’re gonna believe them until you prove your innocence otherwise. Now, here’s the CPS investigator. She’s gonna tell you everything the girls said you did.”
They tell him all the facts before they ask him what happened.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: So they’ve contaminated him.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Stan Walters: Then you have things like, “Would you just like to write, uh, an apology letter? You didn’t mean to hurt her. It was an accident.” So minimizing. So contamination or c- confirmation bias fed by body language or preconception bias.
Then we contaminate the subject and we hear it back and we think, “Ah, I got him.” Worked a murder case where a child was killed, and all the boyfriend said was, because he was watching the child when she died, he was asleep when she died. He said, “I feel responsible.” The detective took that as a confession, but he got no facts of…
He’d been living with the mother of the victim three weeks. Autopsy demonstrated the injuries were three months old, blunt force trauma.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: They convicted the guy
Zach Elwood: Right
Stan Walters: So you see the kind of contamination in it with… Then the third piece is that minimizing, which triples that risk. So those three factors are very common in accusatory type of interviews.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. So
Stan Walters: that’s where the path led me with the body language and f- sticking with the speech. So you had some thoughts, so let’s hear.
Zach Elwood: Oh, yeah, I got so many. It’s hard to- … rank them all. Um, yeah, I- Great … I mean, there’s, there’s a lot to talk about there. I, I wanna pivot to, uh- Sure … why, why I initially wanted to talk to you.
One of the reasons- Okay … I initially wanted to talk to you was I thought you would have good insight into why, uh, law enforcement and other practitioners, some people and some practitioners can really believe that there is a lot of use and efficacy from non-verbal behavior. And I’ll, I’ll give my thought, uh, one of my- Yeah
one of my thoughts and see what you think of it. In Tim Levine’s work, uh, I don’t know if, you know, if you read his work, he, he’s a deception detection and behavior researcher, and he wrote this great book, Duped, and I’ve had him on the podcast a few times. He gives an overview of the deception detection research in the- Uh-huh
non-verbal behavior area. But one of his, uh, one of his theories which I think is quite, uh, sound, his, hi- his takeaway is that the, like the 55% reliability that you find in a lot of- Mm-hmm … the non-verbal, uh, deception detection research, after put- putting a lot of work into it, he, he found that that’s due…
It could be seen to be due to some people that could be termed bad liars. Like, there’s some percentage- Oh, yeah … a small percentage of people that just act really in stereotypically anxious, nervous ways- Mm … when they’re lying, right? So those are the people that kind of take it from a kind of a chance level to more of a- Uh-huh
55% or little bit above level sometimes. Okay. You know, sometimes a good amount more, depending on the study or whatever. That m- these, these so-called bad liars might account for some of that above average thing, which I think is a really good theory because it’s not, you know, we’re talking about people that do these stereotypically things that many people would view as guilty and, and deceptive.
Right. And even though other people, other innocent people, not deceptive people, do some of those things, too, these people are just triggering our instinct to, you know, many people’s instinct to be like, “Oh, they seem nervous,” right? And so- … they’re, they’re triggering that, that, that, that instinct that many of us have about- About-
how liars look- Yeah … right? And, and, and a lot of t- you know, and so I think there is something interesting there where it’s like in the law enforcement domain, I think there probably are, uh, a good amount of bad liars in the sense that like- You know, and I, I think there’s even theoretically something that could be studied where it’s like there might be something about the, uh, you know, these cr- the, the criminal in- interrogation and interview setting that where bad liars, so-called bad liars, are over-represented because, you know, if you know that you’re screwed basically from the evidence, maybe you don’t care about giving away that you’re anxious in a w- in a way that comes across as very suspicious to me, right?
So that’s, that’s just a thing, a, a rabbit hole I was going down because I think, you know, law enforcement practitioners are… They’re, they’re not stupid. There’s a reason that many people would say like, “I found this valuable,” right? And I think that’s worth looking into is like why they say that. And I, I think in talking to law enforcement people myself, like for the podcast and offline also, I do think it’s a lot of these like stereotypically nervous things which do show up.
Like I’ve watched a lot of interrogation footage. I mean, there’s some people that you’re like, oh yeah, if you turn the sound off, you could probably spot these, these people just seem unusually nervous for like the situation. Like they’re just coming in to be talked to, right? So it’s just to say like we can igno- I, I think that’s an interesting idea because it helps us see like, A, this stuff isn’t very useful, but there might be cases where practitioners are, are thinking like, “This person just came across like extremely nervous and made me think like there’s no way this…”
You know, made them think it was highly unlikely that they were innocent. But I’m curious for your, for your thoughts on threading that needle there.
Stan Walters: I agree with that. I think that’s the point. You have some… And it’s, that might be related to communication skills. And so if you’re If you think an upside down bell curve, think of body language and how much people use, take the bell curve and turn it upside down.
Okay? My dad was a pastor of a church, and we had a deaf church that was also operated in another part of our church. And once a month they’d come up and their pastor would sign language for the hearing and speech impaired. And one of the things I try to point out to the students is that, you know, how does a s- person who has speech impairment or hearing impairment, what are their sign language signs like if they’re angry?
Well, they tend to be further from their body and larger, ’cause they gotta compensate, right? And their hearing is more compensated. You find people with poor verbal skills have to supplement with a lot of nonverbal output. They don’t do it consciously, it’s just the pattern. Then there’s the rest of us kind of in the middle of the curve.
But then way over here on this side, the peak again, now you’re talking about the, um, oh, who’s the guy, the NLP guy? I can’t think of his name. He just went right out of my head. Tony-
Zach Elwood: Oh, Tony, uh, Robbins?
Stan Walters: To- like, like Tony Robbins- Yeah … or like Barack Obama or like Reagan or like some of the best orators. Uh, uh, Rubio, great orator.
And it’s almost an art form.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: And their movements and their gestures, and it’s, it’s such a synchronized beautiful thing to watch because their skills and expressions all match- Hmm … very well with each other. So they may be, like you said, those poor liars are on that far part of the scale, they lack that.
Now, what took me, and, and I’d like you to think the next level, I’ve delved a lot into persuasion and influence with Robert Cialdini.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: Primarily, how do we persuade someone ethically, if you’re like talking to a victim or witness, to be cooperative or to be compliant or to trust you? You have thinking and acting, so the top row would be influence and then persuasion.
That’s the ethical process. On the bottom is the dark side, is manipulation and coercion. So if somebody’s deceiving you, they’re trying to manipulate your thinking, that your thinking’s wrong, you’ve made the mistake, you’ve had the error, this is your fault, you’ve misinterpreted, gaslighting more or less.
And so they have to manipulate you through body language how not to do it. If you listen to the dialogue. Now, the coercion, “If you don’t do this, I’ll sue you. If you don’t do this, I’ll fire… get you fired from the job,” et cetera. And that’s where I think deception operates, is in that manipulation segment.
So combining your thoughts, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll put a new bug in your bonnet so you can start thinking about it. I’ve created a, a, an AI cartoon, I’ll admit it, for class Using a body language signal to determine if a person is being deceptive is about as valuable as taking a water sample with an eyedropper out of the Pacific Ocean.
You’re taking that one sample, that one, of all the stuff that you have, and you’re judging by that microscopic sample.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: Let’s take the whole conversation. So I’ve … Working on what I call cognitive reliability framework. So this morning I was doing a podcast, uh, with Billy Bush on the interview of Patrick Clancy, the husband of the woman who killed a baby, he said at trial.
And he … And when we were talking about his reliability, to me now I’m looking, there’s no … And I wanna follow up with a question in an interview. I’m looking for missing spots.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. And one- Like narrative, narrative missing spots? Yeah.
Stan Walters: Right. Uh-huh. Um, there’s one myth, liars tell too many details. No, liars prattle.
Liars don’t even give you a good lie because they know if you go check it, you find out they’re lying. They’re very, very vague.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: Example that just jumped in my head two weeks ago and I wrote about it. There’s a guy in my class named Rex. I, a, a Sunday school class back when I lived in Kentucky. He worked for IBM, they had an IBM plant.
So what do you … I went to ask him, “What do you do, Rex?” He said, “I am a repair manual tester.” Would that be like little Abner being the mattress tester, you know? I said, “What is a, a, a repair manual tester?” He said, “I’m at a …” You remember the old balls electric typewriters?
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: Okay. He said, that’s the era he was in.
He said, “The guy standing next to me, he’s reading the repair manual for me to take this apart and fix something. So he’ll read, ‘Remove the ball.’ So I’ll remove the ball. ‘Take out platen.’ He said I’ll stop. And he said, ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘You didn’t tell me how to take out the platen.’ He goes, ‘Oh, unscrew the screws.’
Which ones? There’s two on each end.” So Rex would stop because there wasn’t fulfilled instructions. So think of your victim The more that data they give, and this, this we– is, is also, uh, verified with, with, uh, peer-reviewed research. They give you more connective detail. And so it’s almost like listening, could you recreate the event as they have just said it- Mm-hmm
by following that storyline? Now, if you’re my victim, and it was one, it was a, a guy who was a serial killer, and his first possible victim survived. She didn’t realize it. We didn’t realize it for a long time. She made a comment about stumbling down a hall, uh, and, um, it’s a long story. I asked her because she said it twice, but it, it didn’t make sense.
I said, “Why were you stumbling? Were you drinking? Were you doing drugs?” Which is all right. “Why was you stumbling?” She said, “Well, it was like a gray piece of paper in front of my face. There was only two little holes I could stare through, like turning binoculars backwards, looking at the big end.”
Zach Elwood: Oh, nice little detail, yeah.
Stan Walters: I said, “Yeah.” I said, “What were you doing in the bedroom?” And she told me he was strangling her to death. She had three or four c- ’cause they were into gasping stuff. She’d been interviewed three or four times, and the homicide investigator beside me, he was telling, he said, “We’ve talked to you several times.
You never told us that. Why didn’t you tell us?” And here’s the impression. She said, “I didn’t know it was important, and you didn’t ask me.”
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: So it begins, what am I not hearing? Can I string it together and put a storyboard together? And that victim may think, “Well, that’s not important,” or they’re embarrassed, or they feel partially responsible for their victimization.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Stan Walters: I was interviewing a guy. He’s a, he was a rapist up in Baton Rouge. They asked me to come in. It was on cr- New Year’s holidays. Said, “Sure, I’ll come up.” I was in Kentucky. And all I was talking to him about was one victim who tried, who had escaped from him. Spent three hours, talked about his background and family, came back the next day, three hours, and I hit a spot about his relationship with, with women, and his head dropped, and he put his hands in his face.
I said, “He’s– Oh, something’s coming. Tell me what happened, Danny.” He gave up a 16-year-old unsolved homicide in Texas that nobody knew he was connected to. When I got done, when they finished with him, he had 16 homicides over 16 years. He was a serial killer. They executed him in Texas about eight years ago Say, beautiful thing, I didn’t have anything to contaminate him with.
I was just picking those missing spots-
Zach Elwood: Hmm …
Stan Walters: where there was gaps, where memories were scrambled, and hoping to clear them up. And the more I dug, the more- Hmm … this information. And I treat him respect.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: Didn’t yell at, didn’t accuse him.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: And I was there for talk about a rape.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: I got him from Montana to Florida to Alabama to Mississippi, all the way to Florida, killing women down the Pahoa Pipeline.
Zach Elwood: Getting back to that point about how much information there can be and what people say, it’s like there’s just so much massive information- Mm-hmm … in what people say and what they don’t say, and what they draw attention to, and what they leave out, and what they’re vague about, and the verifiability of what they say.
You know, like there’s just so much information there- Yeah … and it’s like, it just is crazy to me that people would think like, “I’m gonna focus on like these non-verbal things” when like there’s just so much massive information. And to your point, like so many of the, so many of the patterns, like including patterns that have been studied, you know, in, in research I, I was talking to, uh, for the podcast I talked to, uh, Bennett Klei- Kleinberg, who does, uh, research into, you know, verbal statement patterns around deception.
Right. And some of it, you know, is related to what you just talked about. And it’s like, um, yeah, there’s, there’s just so much information there about where people are, are drawing your attention, getting the sense of where those, yeah, like you said, the gaps in the stories or where it’s vague. Yeah, so I think it’s a, it’s a great point,
Stan Walters: yeah.
It’s part of the manipulation. And a, a couple spots where you’re digging, the more recent setup, uh, I did a YouTube one that went this morning, verifiability approach. Look at verifiability approach.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm
Stan Walters: Cognitive credibility assessment and, and ACID. It’s not that acid. Uh, s- something, uh, cues indicating a, uh, A-C-I-D, something cues indicating deception.
Those first- Hmm … three are showing very, very, very high promise.
Zach Elwood: Oh, yeah. Assessment criteria indicative of deception.
Stan Walters: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Stan Walters: S- so that’s, that’s where my, my mind is now.
Zach Elwood: Right.
Stan Walters: Now, you were asking a great question about why are we teaching this stuff still?
Zach Elwood: Well, that … I wanna ask you, are we still … ‘Cause I, I’m curious.
I’m not, I’m not in law enforcement, and I try to get people talking about this ’cause I, I don’t have insight into it. But it’s like- Sure … it seems to me like it’s kind of, you know, sort of like mapping your learnings. It seems it’s kind of fallen by the wayside for in large part. But I’m curious to get your take on that.
D- uh, what have you seen over the years? I mean, ’cause one thing I’ve, I’ve seen is like with the failure of the, or at least perceived failure of the SPOT program and such- Uh-huh … uh, in TSA, it seems like a lot of those ideas have kind of like fallen by the wayside. But what’s your, what’s your view? Are they still rampant and, and common in-
Stan Walters: It’s still, it’s still rampant.
Zach Elwood: Okay.
Stan Walters: I was looking the other day and at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center down in Georgia, they’re still teaching 50-year-old out-of-date body language symptoms as sign of deception to federal agents.
Zach Elwood: Wow.
Stan Walters: I, I’ve have run across many academies. One of the first things I do in, in the morning in one of my classes, the first three hours, four hours, we work on the Daubert principle, what is scientific evidence, and why some of the things we’ve been using will get your butt sued off in federal court for false confessions contamination.
And so I g- I, I said, “I’m giving you inoculation. This is your legal inoculation.” I, I ask them, “What are some of the signs of deception?” And they give me all kinds of body language signs. I said, “Where’d you learn this?” “Such and so class.” “When’d you have it?” “Two weeks ago.”
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: And the answer that you get when you talk to those academies, that
You can finish the sentence for me. That’s the way we’ve-
Zach Elwood: Always done things?
Stan Walters: Bingo. A lot of academies are check mark. Now, go to an academy, ask them this, “Have you audited your officer-involved shooting training? Have you looked over?” “Oh, yeah, we keep it up to date.” Okay. “Have you audited domestic violence and seen what your training was about dealing with domestic violence or hostage?”
“Oh, yeah, we train regularly.” “Have you audited anything you’re being taught by interview and interrogation?” “No, we’ve used the same technique for 30 years.”
Zach Elwood: Hmm. Interesting.
Stan Walters: Uh, and a number that you might find fascinating, and you might have to get Chad or somebody to do this, the number of officer-involved shootings in the United States, average financial losses per, per case.
Then the number of false confession cases that go to trial is like one-fifth, maybe one-quarter, really small number. But the numbers for loss are fi- financially are five times as high as an officer-involved shooting wrongful death investigation.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: Case last year or two years ago in Chicago, false confession case, $120 million award to the victim.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: They hit the two investigators 50 grand a piece. Now, where’s that 120 million come from?
Zach Elwood: Taxpayer.
Stan Walters: Yep. And they’ll get… And this is where I do my investments. They’ll do a bond issue at 4%, and they’ll raise bonds for something, and they’ll pay every six months at a 4 or 5% on that bond at $2,500 per bond.
You buy them up, investment. They are tax deductible because they are not… Or they’re not taxable because they’re municipal bonds. A good 40% of my retirement money is in municipal bonds.
Zach Elwood: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: And that’s how they pay for it, which means they don’t have money for the other projects and everything else they’re doing in the city- Hmm
and for their, for the citizens.
Zach Elwood: I may, I may have a biased sample because I follow- Sure … like people into the science-based interrogation on LinkedIn and such like Ma- Sure … Maria Hartwig and people like that. Oh,
Stan Walters: yeah, Maria’s great.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm. And it’s like, I, I probably just have a skewed perspective of how common those ideas are.
Uh, but you would think… I, I’m just shocked because like you say, it’s like there’s theoretically a lot of money on the line. You would think they, even out of defense, they would, uh, defense purposes, they would put more efforts into like updating their trainings and such.
Stan Walters: I think you’ve ha- I, I saw you had, uh, Mr.
Bieler, Secret Service. Uh, have you talked to Christian Corey?
Zach Elwood: Yeah, he was on my episode with, uh- I thought so … Ma- Maria. Yeah.
Stan Walters: But there’s some, um, Mark Anderson. These ones I’ve spotted on LinkedIn also that are on, I think are on the right path.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: I see this one on LinkedIn. This person has been named one of the top three body language people in the world by Time Magazine.
It’s a popularity poll.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Stan Walters: But she’s one of the three top body language people I know her, I know her background. The, and there’s several other people like this. “I’ve trained with the FBI.” Well, I check on it, they sat in a one class
Zach Elwood: There’s a lot of ambiguous language used.
Stan Walters: Yes, there is.
Zach Elwood: It, yeah, like I’ve, I’ve seen this a lot where it’s like I, one, one, one I recently saw was where one of these, you know, behavior experts said- Uh-huh
I’ve trained people from like 16 government agencies or something like that. Yeah. And then that led podcast, a podcast host who interviewed her to say she’s trained 16 government agencies or something. But what she really did was she spoke to a room in which there may have been one- Mm-hmm … or more person.
She did, you know, she did it for the polygraph examiners, uh- Right … group or something. And like, so there were people that were from or had previously been at some of those agencies. So it’s like, uh, I, I think this like ambiguous language is common for any self-promotional- Uh-huh … stuff, but it’s like especially common in this like behavior expert space, let’s, let’s say.
Um, you just really have to like think about kind of getting back to like interviewing people, i- interrogations, you have to really examine what are they actually telling you and what they’re leaving out. Like, how are they wording, how are people wording their things, you know? Um.
Stan Walters: Yeah.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Stan Walters: You know, you were talking about the, and, and you got some questions to ask, and why don’t you make sure you get to them.
But you were talking about the, the poor liars.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Stan Walters: You know, they don’t do a poor job. I’ve, and I have trained 40 hours, have taught to National Security Agency for 25 years, um, among o- and Defense Intelligence Agency. I’ve been in 33 military units during the Gulf War training battlefield surveillance brigades, military intelligence, counterintelligence.
I’ve trained the entire fifth group, first group, seventh, uh, fourth infantry, tw- uh, 33 different units. So my stuff was used down range. Okay. Do you think any of the spies or in, or the intelligence operatives or double agents or undercover operatives gonna be bad liars. Not if they keep, gonna keep their job, they don’t.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: My business partner for 30 years was CIA, and his job, he did the bringing the spies in from the cold who defected from other countries.
Zach Elwood: Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: So Bill and I, on our traveling a trip, had long conversations about the cases and some of the things that these guys did. Uh, but I would just, comparison of that- Well-
truly trained spy versus, you know, the common criminal.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. I, i- in my, in my talking about that bad liar idea, it’s like, a- and I hope it’s clear it’s not to defend the use of- Oh, no, no, no … non-verbal behavior. It’s like, it’s, I think it’s helping explain why some people, it’s one of the many reasons, I think, one of several reasons why I think practitioners can think like, “No, there’s something to this.
I’ve interacted with people that I thought behaved, you know, non-verbally strange.” And it’s like, yeah, you maybe have, but that doesn’t tell us that that’s useful as a practice or a protocol, right? Yeah. Like, um, it’s like, yeah, there’s, there are interesting things that happen in the non-verbal space. Like I have many, a list of many things that I have observed.
It doesn’t mean like I would use it as a protocol ’cause it’s like, you know, a- and I’ve talked to law enforcement people for this show that were like, “Well, even if you notice those things, you know, you, you almost always have other information that’s much more valuable, like the things they’re saying- Yeah
the evidence. And y- and you’re not gonna base a major decision on those things anyway. You’re not gonna like write it up like they touched their face or they, you know, you’re not gonna write it up as evidence or like a reason to do anything. Exactly. Yeah. So it’s like, even if you, even if you have a inkling that it mattered in some sense, it’s like, what are you gonna do with that?
Like almost always you’re gonna rely on where the investigation is taking you from the evidence and what they say. So it’s like-
Stan Walters: You, you know what strikes me about that is something d- it’s punchline. I wonder how many of these people have interviewed an adult or a child that has ADHD And try, and try to read body language.
I’ve got a daughter and a gr- and her son, my grandson, both ADHD.
Zach Elwood: Mm. Mm.
Stan Walters: I defy you to try to keep track of the body language of those two when they get, when they get jazzed up.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. Uh, yeah.
Stan Walters: Let’s hear your questions, ’cause I’ve, I’ve taken
Zach Elwood: up most of the
Stan Walters: time- Oh, yeah …
Zach Elwood: so, so fire away I think, uh, I mean, I think we’re largely…
I, I’ll skip over quite a few of them, but I am curious to get, uh, uh, you know, when it comes to the things that actually mattered, because I, I, I’m, I’m interested, leaving, leaving aside, like, the actual story narrative stuff of what people say, I, I’m, I’m kind of interested in this, like, quick read aspect of, like, little clues.
You know, I’ll give an ex- Mm … I’ll give an example. You talked about the verifiability aspect, the, the dimension of that where, uh, I had an e- I had an example of that in real, in real world where, uh, related to the Epstein file stuff. Uh-huh. There was, uh, Brett Ratner, the director, had apparently gone to, you know, the Epst- one of the Epstein parties.
And so there was- Mm-hmm … uh, there was a picture of him and Epstein, and they both had a, a woman beside them. They, they each had- Yeah … a woman beside them, but the women’s faces were, were, uh- Right … blacked out. You couldn’t tell who the women were. And Brett Ratner was explaining it in an interview, and he said, um, uh…
And in, in the picture the woman looked pretty young. You couldn’t tell her age, but she looked pretty young. And Brett Ratner was like, “That was my fiancee. Uh, we ended up breaking up.” And the, the- Oof … the fact that he would be so specific is- Mm-hmm … is the verifiability thing. Like, if he was gonna deceive you, he would use ambiguous language, right?
But the fact that he- Right … said something that you could easily verify, right? Like, that stood out to me as like, “Oh, I think he’s telling the truth,” like, immediately. Because, like, a liar’s not gonna, like, use very sp- like, it, it’d be pretty easy- Specific, yeah … to vet his story, right? You could find out who his fiances or close girlfriends were and figure it out from there, right?
So that, th- those are kind of, like, quick reads that I’m interested in. Yeah. And I’m, and I’m curious, like, what, what stands out to you? It might be a big question, but I’m curious, what’s top of mind for you for, like, getting a quick sense in, in the real world of, like, “Oh, I got a, I got a very highly confident vibe that this person’s deceptive or not”?
Stan Walters: I like to engage them first and just, just in a dialogue, see, to get talkative and, and get that, that open dialogue. And cut up and say something half stupid just, you know, to break the ice.
Zach Elwood: Mm. Mm-hmm. Set them at ease by you being not as
Stan Walters: serious. Set, set them, yes. Yeah, yeah. I just goof off, you know- Yeah
and so forth. Prisoners, give them coffee. You know, take them Dr Pepper, a Reese cup, Ding Dong, give them something. You know, that’s part of reciprocity. When I do the inmates and when I get cases from attorneys, so let’s say it’s a homicide or a child abuse, whatever. I’ll say, “Okay, fine. Do not tell me the facts of the case.
I do not wanna know. Do not send me the forensics.” “Well, how are you gonna know?” I said, “If your interviewer’s any good, they’ll uncover it. I’ll hear it.” And so that’s what I’m judging is what I’m hearing. And I’ll say, “Have you gone back to look at this? And I have a problem with this spot and this spot.”
Homicide, a cop, and a store owner. Three young men were convicted, sent to death row on it, and they were appealing. One of them was appealing his death sentence, and he had been coerced or wrongfully convicted. And I had … It was 17 interviews, 14 investigators. A sergeant interviewed witnesses two times, two people in a room at the same time and four people in a room at the same time, interviewed them as a group, a sergeant in homicide.
And this is one of the top 10 police departments in the United States. I’m reading through and I see this point where the g- the, the client said, “Holy cow, he’s not even in the city. It’s right here in the statement.”
Zach Elwood: Hmm. “
Stan Walters: He’s not there. He’s on the phone at his current girlfriend’s house talking to his baby’s mama on the phone.”
They’d missed that.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: And he’s on death row for that. The other two guys- What? … get mad at him because he wouldn’t go in the robbery, so they both blamed him for the homicide.
Zach Elwood: Oh my God.
Stan Walters: And they convicted him with the group. Well, it turns out prosecution also withheld conveniently that part of the evidence in the case.
So they said, “How’d you find that?” I said, “It’s right there in front of me. I can see it.”
Zach Elwood: Wow.
Stan Walters: He’s saying it
Zach Elwood: A quick note here; the case Stan is talking about here was the wrongful conviction of Alfred Dewayne Brown. Apparently Brown’s conviction was based on false testimony from his girlfriend, who later recanted and said that she felt pressured by the investigators and that was why she initially lied. Back to the talk.
Stan Walters: So you’re right about looking for what’s missing and taking that time. Once, I can’t– I’d have to go back and look now who was the study. Interviewers asked an average of one question every 20 seconds How do you carry on a conversation with that? And you’re supposed to be eliciting comments and remarks.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: But that tends to be that accusatory, you know, if you stop talking you lose, who stops talking first is a loser type approach. So-
Zach Elwood: Mm.
Stan Walters: Again, I’m taking your time, I’m sorry.
Zach Elwood: No, no, no. You have some- That’s- Yeah … uh, that’s what stands out to me as the bad, or at least interrogations that I view as bad.
It’s like they’re asking all these questions, and sometimes they’re, they’re not even… Sometimes they’re asking like two questions in a row, which is like a fundamental- Yeah … you know, a huge mistake ’cause they’re not, then you’re not, they’re not even answering a question at that point. So it’s like- Right
yeah, peppering people with questions really stands up there as like one of the biggest failures.
Stan Walters: Any- This is where you start to yell at televisions.
Zach Elwood: Oh, yeah, yeah. You’re watching
Stan Walters: the shows.
Zach Elwood: Well, I was watching that Lie to Me show ’cause I, I had seen a little bit of it before, but I was kinda curious. I got, I g- Yeah
I got down the rabbit hole of like, I wanna see what this thing is talking about. And it’s like, yeah, between Paul Ekman and that show, which is, you know, based on Paul Ekman’s ideas- Sure … like so much of that stuff is… I mean, Paul Ekman is the progenitor of so much of that, those ideas. And then like, but from that show, that show basically acted as like, let us disperse all these ideas to a mainstream audience.
So now you have all these people thinking these like faulty ideas about what’s possible with, uh… You know, even though there’s like a major disclaimer on the show, it’s like, yeah, many people think like, “Oh, this is based on real research.” Right. Like, “This is real. You can really do this stuff,” you know? So it’s, it’s kind of a wild show and, and just from a culturally significant show, I think, in the behavior reading space.
Stan Walters: I think one thing you picked up on too is that, uh, Ekman’s work was a big, uh, central part of the SPOT program that TSA was using. And I had a poli- a detective, we were talking about the SPOT program. He said, “Yeah, they’re probably ready to, to put me up ’cause they… I was on a flight. I badged ’em, and the lady said, ‘You look like you’re upset today.'”
Well, that’s called a sh- single shoot question. “Yeah, you’re gonna make me miss my flight.” And so they pulled him off and detained him, asking questions. “I’m on my way for a case.” Made him miss his flight.
Zach Elwood: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: And so you can imagine the little frustration that he’s got. They pulled him. Mm-hmm. So a defi- you know, a hammer is a hammer till you give it to a monkey.
Then he’s gonna do what he want. He’ll hammer everything with it.
Zach Elwood: This is great, Stan. I almost, if you’re up for it, I’ll invite you back in future ’cause I feel like- Oh, I’d love
Stan Walters: to …
Zach Elwood: we only just- Yeah … scratched the surface, and I think you have a really interesting perspective as somebody who was so into the…
Or, I don’t, I don’t wanna say so into, but you were into- You’re right … the body language stuff- Oh, yeah … early on. That’s what I
Stan Walters: learned on. And then
Zach Elwood: the arc, I mean, I, I talked to Mark Anderson. He had a similar, uh, arc there. But yeah, this has been great. Is there anything you wanna talk about, what you’re working on, before we, uh, sign off on this?
Stan Walters: Got a big YouTube channel going. You’ve, you’ve seen that. I got about 180, uh, videos there. Oh, I do have a free guide that you can get if anybody wants to get a hold of it.
Zach Elwood: Oh, yeah. Give the, uh, address for that.
Stan Walters: I have a pretty good… If you look at thelieguy.com, it’ll pop up, slide across the front page.
It’s an eGuide. Now, I’ve done something cool with it, electronic guide. It’s an, a PDF. You’ve seen in a PDF they have highlights that take you to a website, the hyperlinks. Mm-hmm. So I thought, “Okay, why couldn’t I put a hyperlink to a video that addresses this topic?” So I did that too for every section. So there’s 18 videos associated with that topic.
So I started searching, who else has done this? Nobody.
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: I couldn’t find anybody that put the video with the link inside the e-book. Right. Free download, use it all you want. Mm-hmm. Pass it around, just don’t take my name off of it and just don’t change it. I mean, enjoy it the way you want.
Zach Elwood: I was curious, a random question.
When you talked about those studies you did with John Jay back in the day with the footage from the real cases, is any of that stuff available to, even to a private audience that, i- i- is that stuff available to wa- for anybody to watch?
Stan Walters: That part is not. Yeah. Um, I have some stuff that I have done… Well, if you just search Interviews and Interrogations on YouTube, you’ll come up with a lot.
Zach Elwood: Yeah, there’s a lot. I kind of wonder if there was like, you know, I’m always interested in the real footage and, and, and like- Sure … especially for one, if they did, if they already have it cropped or whatever for, uh-
Stan Walters: Uh-huh …
Zach Elwood: for a, for a, you know, behavior study. That’s kind of interesting, too. It’s, like, more focused and they, and if, and if they knew the lies and the truths aspect, too.
That’s- Yeah … that’s interesting. But, um, yeah, maybe I’ll ask you more about that offline, though. Uh, but this has been great. Yeah. Thanks a lot for joining me, Stan.
Stan Walters: I’m s- sorry I dominated, but I just … You can tell I love what I do.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: I’ve been doing it 40, 40, 44 years now. 50,000 hours as an instructor.
Zach Elwood: Wow.
Stan Walters: 40 prisons, visiting. Visiting.
Zach Elwood: Yeah.
Stan Walters: 15, fif- I’ve got, in my office, I got 1,500 videotaped interviews of those inmates, including US detention barracks in, in Fort Leavenworth where I did- Wow … some work with the US Army CID MP school.
Zach Elwood: Very cool.
Stan Walters: Oh, you had a great question. Where’d the Lie Guy come from?
This would be a good one to close with.
Zach Elwood: Okay. Yeah, yeah.
Stan Walters: So the internet was brand new, and used to be just, you know, your name was letters and codes, and AOL came out, you could just start using a name.
Zach Elwood: Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: And I remember distinctly, this is the, this is a factual story. Context, semantics, cognitive, sensory cues are in here.
Okay? I was in Denver, downtown in a, down in the basement of a hotel, and a guy was talking. He was an arson investigator. And I was talking about maybe getting on the internet, and he said, “You should do it, email.” I said, “What’s an email?” You know? That’s how new it was, right? And he says, “Well, get AOL. It’s the easiest, and here’s my email address.
Send me a note. I’ll send a note back.” His address was [email protected].
Zach Elwood: Hmm.
Stan Walters: So I sign up. “What’s your screen name?” I go, “What’s a screen name?” So I look it up and I says… And I thought, “Fire Guy,” and I thought, “Lie Guy.”
Zach Elwood: Oh, yeah. So that’s how
Stan Walters: you- So I put it in. It was two months later that NBC called me to do a thing with Lynn Cannon on the Ramseys interview.
And he said, “Do you have an e-, uh, do you have a email address?” I said, “Yes, I do. I got an email address.” It’s Lie Guy @AOL.com. The … And he said, “Oh, you’re The Lie Guy.” And I thought, “That’s a trademark.”
Zach Elwood: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: I filed immediately on it. So that always ca- I- always catches somebody’s attention. “Oh, you’re The Lie Guy.”
Zach Elwood: Mm. Mm-hmm.
Stan Walters: And I’ve had that email … Well, I’ve had that trademarked, like, 40-something years now.
Zach Elwood: No, that’s cool. Yeah. So it just- Good backstory … it’s
Stan Walters: a tag. Yeah. Just a tag.
Zach Elwood: Yeah. All right. Based on the con- context clues and specificity, I, I think you were telling the truth there, so yeah. All right. Um, no, this is great, Stan.
Thanks a lot.
Zach Elwood: That was a talk with Stan Walters, who you can learn more about by going to his site thelieguy.com.
This has been the People Who Read People podcast with me, Zach Elwood. You can learn more about this podcast at behavior-podcast.com. You can learn more about my work on poker tells at readingpokertells.com.
Music by Small Skies.