The Vidocq Society: Solving Murders Over Lunch

From NPR:

The Vidocq Society sounds like something straight out of a Sherlock Holmes novel.

Once a month, the members of the 20-year-old club — mostly detectives and forensic experts — meet at an old Victorian dining room in the middle of Philadelphia to eat lunch and solve crimes that have perplexed investigators for decades.

"I think of it as CSI to the 10th power but real," says journalist Michael Capuzzo. There are profilers and pathologists, experts in white-collar crime, terrorism and sadism. They have Interpol represented, and a captain from the Egyptian army — and for good measure, they even have a psychic.

Capuzzo has spent years becoming intimately familiar with the Vidocq Society, which is named for the 18th-century criminal-turned-crime-fighter Eugene François Vidocq. Capuzzo's new book, The Murder Room, details how the three founding members gathered crime experts from around the world to solve cold cases. He also profiles some of their more famous investigations.

Both Capuzzo and Richard Walter, a forensic psychologist considered to be the father of criminal profiling, join Dave Davies for a conversation about how the monthly lunchtime meetings turn into round-table discussions about possible motives and murder suspects.

Walter describes one case, the brutal 1984 murder of a night manager named Terri Brooks in Falls Township, Pa. She was stabbed inside the Roy Rogers restaurant where she had been working. The extremely violent attack — her head was wrapped in cellophane, and a knife wound had punctured her throat — was perplexing to local officers. The safe inside the restaurant had been manipulated, so investigators thought the murder was the result of a "robbery gone wrong."

For 14 years, the case went unsolved — until the case was brought to a Vidocq Society meeting. After listening to officers from Falls Township describe the case, Richard Walter stood up and told the officers that this wasn't a robbery gone wrong — and that Terri Brooks had been targeted and murdered by someone she knew.

"When you looked at the body, when you looked at the crime scene itself, it was obvious that it was not a robbery," Walters explains to Davies. "What robbery suspect would stab someone so viciously that the knife enters the tile floor and wrap the head in cellophane? A robber is simply not going to do that. It's not efficient. There's no value in that kind of an activity. So you have to look how he spends his time and his interest by what's there and by what's not there."

Walter thought the staged robbery was simply a red herring staged by the suspect to throw police off his trail. The police then asked Walter to create a profile of a potential suspect.

"Given the amount of violence at the scene and how it was personalized to the victim," Walter suspected that the murderer wasn't a stranger. "Also, the victim had to let the suspect in, and so, therefore, the presumption is that she knew him. ... There's extreme hostility, and you see that he doesn't really care when the victim dies. He cares when his anger has been sated. ... So it was simply a matter of watching and plugging in the bits and pieces along the way. In this case, it was reasonable to assume by police that a boyfriend may be involved."

Members of the Vidocq Society talked to Brooks' parents, asking them about any possible boyfriends. They remembered one, a man they thought was named O'Keefe. The detectives scoured arrest records and articles for any mention of an O'Keefe, and found nothing — until they looked at the funeral guest book for Terri Brooks.

Sure enough, a man named Alfred Scott Keefe had signed in to Brooks' funeral registrar. Police officers obtained a warrant to get Keefe's DNA — from cigarettes he threw out at the curb. It matched DNA from the crime scene. After an interrogation, he confessed. Sixteen months later, he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Walter says members of the Vidocq Society try to look at cases — like the murder of Terri Brooks — from all angles.

"I think that many times, we tend to look at things linearly on a straight, flat line and don't see a relationship between evidence," he says. "I try, particularly when humans and people are involved and motives and all of these sorts of things, to look at the evidence on a differential plane. And so you get a sense of depth and insight into [the crime.]"

Full article and story can be found here at NPR.

White House Wants To Extend FBI Director

President Obama has asked Congress to extend the term of current FBI director Robert Mueller for two years.

Listen to the story at NPR here.

ROBERT SIEGEL, host:

To Washington now, where the White House is asking Congress to extend the tenure of FBI Director Robert Mueller.

As NPR's Carrie Johnson reports, Mueller's term had been set to expire in September, but President Obama wants him to stick around until 2013.

CARRIE JOHNSON: Robert Mueller became FBI director only a week before the September 11th attacks. Since then, he's labored to get agents to gather intelligence and anticipate terrorist threats in advance. It's one of the hardest jobs in government: sleepless nights with few public rewards. The White House says it's grateful Mueller has agreed to stay at a time of rapid change in the national security ranks.

Here's spokesman Jay Carney talking to reporters today.

Mr. JAY CARNEY (White House Press Secretary): Remember we have a change at CIA. We have a change at the Defense Department. This willingness of Director Mueller to continue to serve for two more years helps provide continuity which is important.

JOHNSON: The decision requires approval from Congress, but lawmakers from both political parties are already expressing support, so is the Justice Department. In a recent interview with NPR, Attorney General Eric Holder said nobody does it better.

Mr. ERIC HOLDER (Attorney General): Bob Mueller, I think, has been a great director in that he's understood both what his responsibilities are and what the limits are to that job.

JOHNSON: Holder and Vice President Joe Biden had been leading the search for Mueller's replacement. It hasn't been easy. A couple of high-profile candidates, Judge Merrick Garland and former Deputy Attorney General Jim Comey, said they weren't interested.

Carrie Johnson, NPR News, Washington.

One Man Says No To Harsh Interrogation Techniques

From NPR:

Matthew Alexander led the interrogation team that tracked down al-Qaida leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in 2006.



Matthew Alexander, a pseudonym for the
author, is pictured with another interrogator
who was part of the task force looking
for Zafar.   Courtesy of St. Martin's Press



Alexander, a critic of the harsh techniques employed by the military during the administration of George W. Bush, says he used strategic, noncoercive methods of interrogation to find al-Zarqawi, which he wrote about in his book How to Break a Terrorist.

In his second book, Kill or Capture, Alexander — a pseudonym for the author — recounts how his team of interrogators tracked down and captured another wanted man: a Syrian named Zafar, the leader of al-Qaida in northern Iraq.

But finding Zafar was not easy. Alexander says he conducted hundreds of interrogations and supervised more than a thousand more while trying to track down a man who eluded security forces and had never once been photographed by U.S. forces.

In a conversation with Dave Davies on NPR's Fresh Air, Alexander details the interrogation tactics he used while conducting his kill-or-capture missions in the area of Iraq where Zafar was thought to be hiding.

"The first step of any interrogation is to understand your detainee, understand what uniquely motivates them as an individual," he explains. "[You have to understand] why they joined al-Qaida or another insurgent group, why they decided to pick up arms. And if you can analyze them and figure out those motivations, then you can craft an appropriate approach and incentive, but not until you've done that."

But Alexander says he couldn't always give the incentives he thought would provide the best response from his potential informants. For example, he was not allowed to offer money or visas to people who provided information about the location of senior al-Qaida members.

"That's a real change," he says. "In Vietnam, we had real incentives that interrogators could offer captured Vietcong members to get them to turn to our side. But we didn't do that in Iraq, and it wasn't until Gen. [David] Petraeus got there and offered the Sunni tribes money and weapons that they turned against al-Qaida."

Alexander learned to offer things he couldn't necessarily deliver, a technique he says criminal investigators use every day to catch criminals. In one instance, he even forged a divorce application for an informant who wanted to get out of a marriage.

"Deception is a legitimate part of warfare," he says. "We don't question deception if an infantry fakes an attack on the left and sweeps right. And interrogators can use deception, too, but they must be careful about how they use that deception. And the reason why is because somebody else is going to interrogate that detainee one day. And if you've used deception and you've been found out, then they're going to have a harder time establishing trust."

To gain trust with the Sunni combatants he was interviewing, Alexander says, he would admit that the United States had made some strategic mistakes in its approach in Iraq.


 

"Almost every detainee that I admitted those mistakes to, they all were surprised that I was willing to admit that," he says. "And it moved many of them to hear that, because many of them had lost family members or friends because of these actions — because of allowing the Shia militias to run free. And so when they heard that apology followed by an offer to work together, it was very appealing."



Kill or Capture
By Matthew Alexander
Hardcover, 304 pages
St. Martin's Press
List Price: $25.99



More than anything, Alexander says, it was important for interrogators to understand the detainee and know exactly where they were coming from. Interrogators who believed in misguided stereotypes about Muslims and Arabs, he says, were the single most detrimental factor to undermining interrogations in Iraq.

"A common parlance that was said by some interrogators and analysts was 'Arabs grow up in a culture of violence, so they only understand violence.' We have that documented in an e-mail from a senior interrogator to his commander at one point in Iraq," he says. "And it was that type of stereotype of Arabs and of Muslims that was very counterproductive to try to get people to cooperate. ... Those prejudices worked directly in contrast to what we were trying to accomplish."

Matthew Alexander is an 18-year veteran of the Air Force and Air Force Reserves. He was awarded the Bronze Star for his achievements in Iraq and has contributed to both the Washington Post and The New York Times.



Listen to the story.

Former Death Row Inmate Freed In Texas

Anthony Graves is free today after being wrongfully convicted of the murder of six people in Burleson County, Texas. The district attorney's office there dropped all capital murder charges against him on Thursday. NPR's Melissa Block talks to Pamela Colloff, senior editor of Texas Monthly, who wrote an exhaustive piece about the case.

Listen to the story at NPR.

This American Life

"This American Life", hosted by Ira Glass, appears on Showtime and may be heard on NPR. The show contains a series of true stories told by those who have experienced them. The show lasts approximately one hour and usually contain a prologue and three acts. Below are a few shows concerning crime, crime scenes, crime stories, and DNA evidence, which may be of interest. They may also be found in the "This American Life" archives.

135: Allure of Crime: We think of crime as a monolithic, menacing presence...Today, we hear from three different criminals and three different crimes.

164: Crime Scenes: Every crime scene hides a story. In this week's show, we hear about crime scenes and the stories they tell.

210: Perfect Evidence: After a decade in which DNA evidence has cleared over 100 people nationwide, it's become clear that DNA evidence isn't just proving wrongdoing by criminals, it's proving wrongdoing by police and prosecutors. In this show, we look at what DNA has revealed to us.

257: What I should have said: People return to the scene of a crime where they should have spoken clearly, plainly, and forcefully...to review what...went wrong, and in a few cases, to fix it. Jonathan Goldstein tries to stop time.

Brain Scans Make for More Accurate Lie Detector Tests

NPR's Ira Flatow, host of Talk of the Nation Science Friday, joins NPR's Noah Adams to discuss how brain scans could provide a more accurate lie detector test. Researchers announced this week that brain scans of people telling the truth look very different from those who are lying. The study was conducted by researchers at Temple University in Philadelphia, Penn.

Episode can be found here.

AP IMPACT: New Meth Formula Avoids Anti-Drug Laws

This is the new formula for methamphetamine: a two-liter soda bottle, a few handfuls of cold pills and some noxious chemicals. Shake the bottle and the volatile reaction produces one of the world's most addictive drugs.

Only a few years ago, making meth required an elaborate lab — with filthy containers simmering over open flames, cans of flammable liquids and hundreds of pills. The process gave off foul odors, sometimes sparked explosions and was so hard to conceal that dealers often "cooked" their drugs in rural areas.

But now drug users are making their own meth in small batches using a faster, cheaper and much simpler method with ingredients that can be carried in a knapsack and mixed on the run. The "shake-and-bake" approach has become popular because it requires a relatively small number of pills of the decongestant pseudoephedrine — an amount easily obtained under even the toughest anti-meth laws that have been adopted across the nation to restrict large purchases of some cold medication.

"Somebody somewhere said 'Wait this requires a lot less pseudoephedrine, and I can fly under the radar,'" said Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control.

An Associated Press review of lab seizures and interviews with state and federal law enforcement agents found that the new method is rapidly spreading across the nation's midsection and is contributing to a spike in the number of meth cases after years of declining arrests.

The new formula does away with the clutter of typical meth labs, and it can turn the back seat of a car or a bathroom stall into a makeshift drug factory. Some addicts have even made the drug while driving.

The pills are crushed, combined with some common household chemicals and then shaken in the soda bottle. No flame is required.

Using the new formula, batches of meth are much smaller but just as dangerous as the old system, which sometimes produces powerful explosions, touches off intense fires and releases drug ingredients that must be handled as toxic waste.

"If there is any oxygen at all in the bottle, it has a propensity to make a giant fireball," said Sgt. Jason Clark of the Missouri State Highway Patrol's Division of Drug and Crime Control. "You're not dealing with rocket scientists here anyway. If they get unlucky at all, it can have a very devastating reaction."

One little mistake, such as unscrewing the bottle cap too fast, can result in a huge blast, and police in Alabama, Oklahoma and other states have linked dozens of flash fires this year — some of them fatal — to meth manufacturing.

"Every meth recipe is dangerous, but in this one, if you don't shake it just right, you can build up too much pressure, and the container can pop," Woodward said. Full article can be found here.

Confessions Of A Drug Smuggler

Brian O'Dea tried marijuana in college and saw dollar signs. A born salesman, he began dealing to fellow college students in the early 1970s.

By the early 1980s, he had built a $100 million a year smuggling operation, and a cocaine addiction. His narcotics racket took him around the world to places such as Bogota, Columbia and Montego Bay, Jamaica.

O'Dea had some successful multimillion dollar deals, but more often than not, rip-offs, double-crosses, getting wasted and waiting characterized the operations.

"High" is Brian O'Dea's memoir of dealing drugs, doing time, and seeking redemption.

Full broadcast and article can be found here.

Purchase "High."

Guantanamo Diary

From NPR:

Guantanamo Bay. The images are indelible. The constitutional and political stakes — epic. The Supreme Court decided in June to give detainees their day in federal court. The trial of Osama bin Laden’s driver ended in a split verdict and short sentence. The alleged 9/11 mastermind is next.

We read all this in the papers, but our guest today knows Guantanamo up close. A young lawyer, she has worked as an interpreter for Afghan detainees. What she has found are human stories and travesties of justice like she’d never imagined. Instead of terrorists, goat herders, politicians, and reputable physicians with no way out.

Listen to the show here

26 Years = Zero

William Swift was released from a Michigan prison in May after serving 26 years for a crime he did not commit. The Innocence Project took Mr. Swift's case ten years ago. While DNA testing was not possible due to lost evidence, the Innocence Project was able to uncover substantial evidence that Mr. Swift did not commit the crime for which he was convicted and his conviction was vacated.

Mr. Swift was convicted, in part, on a faulty photo line-up: the victim of a 1982 Detroit rape picked eight men from hundreds of photos, saying the eight looked like the attacker...Mr. Swift’s photo was the eighth one she chose. He was the only one brought to the station for a line-up and the victim was told that the lineup would include the eighth man she picked. She later identified Mr. Swift as her perpetrator. The officer's concerns about the line-up were met with the officer's transfer off the case.

NPR recently conducted an interview with Mr. Swift addressing how he has gone about picking up the pieces since his wrongful conviction including the lack of resources or compensation available to a man who has wrongfully lost his liberty. 

Listen to NPR Story here.

Full Innocence Project Articles here.