April 17, 2025 • 48 mins
From pop culture to the FBI, the perception of polygraphs varies wildly depending on who you ask. So, Hannah and Patia speak to an expert polygraph examiner whose work led to a bombshell confession in a half-decade old missing persons case, turned murder.
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https://www.kansas.com/news/article1049717.html
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. Hello,
(00:20):
and welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Patia Eaton.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Hannah Smith. On today's episode, we're going to cover
the case of Echo May Wiles's disappearance. We're going to
reference an interview we did with a retired FBI special agent.
We are going to skip recommendations and listeners questions this week. Instead,
we are going to ask a very important question. How
do you know if someone is lying to you? I mean,
(00:47):
this is really something everyone would love to know. I
personally think I'm pretty good at it. Doesn't everybody think
that they're going to do Maybe everybody thinks that. I
feel like that's the problem. Actually is everyone thinks they're
really good at.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It, Like you could never fool me.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, it can be a very difficult thing to know
if someone is telling you the truth.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
And you know, we have been researching this a lot
because we recently spoke with a retired FBI agent by
the name of Mark Rossey, who's an expert polygraph examiner.
Mark was brought in on a case the disappearance of
Echo May Wiles, which actually turned into a murder investigation.
So first we're just going to talk about polygraphs and
(01:27):
what does someone think of when they think of a polygraph.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
My mind goes to like people in a basement, someone
strapped up to a machine sweating, and then there's like
a piece of paper and a machine and like what
do you call that? Like a little wire going crazy
and an angry person on either side who's like.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
You're lying, and terrible lighting. Always, oh, terrible lighting for me.
I also think of puppy Gate, Hannah, puppy Gate, puppy Gate.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Okay, So for those.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Who don't know, I've been trying to get Hannah to
watch the Real House Size Above Hills or really any
franchise unsuccessfully since we met.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Hasn't happened. So I'm just going to tell you about
puppy Gate.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Okay, great.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So Lisa vander Pump, who was a cast member on
the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills before leaving the show,
she has a dog rescue and another cast member, Dereete,
adopted a dog from that rescue. Okay, so here's where
things get a little murky. The dog was re homed
(02:28):
by Derete to someone else who then dropped the dog
off at a shelter. So why this is super bad
other than that nobody wants to drop their dog off
at a shelter, is that with dog rescue, you're usually
signing something in an adoption agreement that says, if anything
goes wrong, I'm going to bring you the dog back
so that they can make sure that dog never ends
(02:50):
up in a shelter again.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So that was the expectation that DeWitt would do that
if she didn't want.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
The dog exactly, and the dog had I think bitten
people in her household or shown aggression and that's why
she rehomed the dog to someone she thought was going
to keep it. And so the story gets out that
Lucy Apple Juice the dog was given to a shelter,
and it becomes this like highly sensationalized story that points
(03:17):
a finger at Dery for, you know, sort of callously
getting rid of this rescue dog. And the allegation on
the show from the other cast members was that Lisa
vander Pump planted the story to get back at Derret's.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Oh my gosh, the drama.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
The drama.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So Lisa, to clear her good name, takes a polygraph test.
So the woman who owns the dog rescue did a
light detector test.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
She did a lie detector test that she set up,
and it's on the show and she walks in there
and I'm pretty sure she brings her little dog with
her and she sits down. A man asks her a
series of questions and she leaves and did she pass?
She did? She passed with flying colors.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
So, as we've now come to learn, this is not
what polygraphs actually are, but they actually have a long
history and sort of a complicated public perception because of
a lot of things we're going to talk about. The
probably biggest reason for that is that they're not admissible
in court. So why don't you tell us a little
(04:23):
bit about the history of polygraphs.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, I feel like it's a storied history in a
lot of ways, because we do we see these images
on television shows and it's just hard to tell how
scientific it is really. There were really early iterations of
this kind of test in the even late seventeen hundreds
and early eighteen hundreds, but the first machine that is
(04:47):
similar to what we have today was invented in nineteen
fifteen by an American psychologist and author William M. Marston,
and it was basically just like a blood pressure monitoring
system that he used to try to determine if someone
was deceiving someone else. And then it was updated in
nineteen twenty one by a physiologist, John A. Larson, who
(05:08):
was also a policeman for the Berkeley, California Police Department,
and his test was a little bit more advanced and
very similar actually to what we have today. So along
with blood pressure, it also measures your breathing and your
pulse and your sweat, like how much you're sweating. And
he incorporated into the Berkeley, California Police departments police interviewing process,
(05:32):
and for a time for a few years, there was
a lot of excitement around that because it was seen
as this new scientific technology that could prove that someone
was either telling a truth or a lie, and everyone
was really excited about it, and in some ways it
was seen as a more humane way to interview suspects
(05:53):
because there was a lot of police using violence, beating
a confession out of someone, if you will, So this
was is a more humane way to question someone and
get an answer. There was kind of immediately though also
skeptics who said, well, how scientific is this really? And
then the first time it appeared in court was nineteen
(06:14):
twenty three, so two years later and it appeared in
a criminal court case Fry versus the United States. James
Alfonso Fry was charged with the murder of a prominent
doctor in Washington, DC, doctor R. W. Brown, who was
shot outside his home in nineteen twenty. Doctor Brown's family
offered a one thousand dollars reward for anyone who could
(06:34):
name the shooter, but for about a year there were
no leads in the case, and then suddenly this guy
in his twenties, James Fry, gets questioned by the police
for other crimes forgery and theft, and somehow at the
end of that he ends up confessing to the murder
of doctor Brown. So he's charged with the murder. The
case goes to trial, but then he gets his defense
(06:56):
attorneys and he tells them he doesn't have anything to
do with them, but he had planned to split the
reward money with the detective who questioned him, and he
said that's why he confessed. Yikes, who knows. But his
attorneys were not in a good place because he had confessed,
so they looked around and they found this guy, William Marston,
(07:17):
the psychologist, the guy who invented the early version of
the polygraph, and convinced him to come on. He gave
Fry a polygraph test and you know, came to the
conclusion that he had given a false confession. They tried
to submit it as evidence, but ultimately the judge denied that,
basically saying that, you know, if scientific technology is going
(07:40):
to be used in a court case, it needs to
be generally accepted as reliable in the scientific community, and
this was not, and that ends up becoming known as
the Fry standard. So, unfortunately, James Fry was convicted of
second degree murder and served eighteen years in prison. One
thing to note that I thought was interesting about who's
the psychologist that they brought in. He was also an
(08:03):
author and years later, in nineteen forty one, he invented
the comic book character wonder Woman. Okay, jack of all trades,
I know, right, Like, how many things can this guy do?
But one of Wonder Woman's magical powers is that she
has a golden lasso called the Lasso of Truth, and
when she ropes someone with it, they're forced to tell
her the truth. Okay, so call back to the light
detector test.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, he's like clearly really interested as we all are,
in this idea. If you had an ability to tell
for sure that someone was telling you the truth or
a lie, it would be so useful. I mean, it's
like so much of crime and what we talk about
and convictions, it's like we're trying to get to the
(08:45):
truth and it's a really difficult thing to get to and.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
For law enforcement, they're so reliant on evidence as they
ought to be. But you know, if someone maybe did
a good job hiding that evidence, but you could still
take a light detector test and get them on that,
that would be case closed for so many investigations.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I mean easy. Yeah, wouldn't that be nice?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Wouldn't that be nice? You know, in the case that
we're going to talk about today, it maybe had some
similarities to the James Fry case in that there were
no leads for a long time and eventually the investigation
was picked back up again and a light detector played
a really big role in closing that case. Yeah, which
(09:30):
I'm excited to get to that.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
One last thing just about you know the history of
the polygraph in nineteen sixty five, there was a US
Committee on Government Operations that did an evaluation of the
polygraph machine and concluded, quote, there is no light detector,
neither man nor machine. People have been deceived by a
myth that a metal box in the hands of an
(09:53):
investigator can detect truth or falsehood. And then there was
another study in two thousand and three by the US
National Research Council which basically said that the results are
better than flipping a coin. Some critics have said the
results are fifty to fifty, it's basically like you're flipping
a coin. This research study basically said that's not true.
(10:16):
The accuracy levels are above fifty percent, more like sixty,
but still that's not great. There's a lot of room
for great and that's something that Mark actually spoke to
us a lot about which we'll get into, which is
the very wide spectrum of experts within polygraphing. So we
(10:38):
actually interviewed a retired FBI special agent, Mark Rozzi, who
was in the FBI for twenty nine and a half
years and had a variety of specialties.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
During that time. He was a profiler, worked on the
SWAT team, and then became a federal polygraph examiner Mark
summarized polygraphs as it's basically what the body does when
the mind realizes you're telling a lie.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
According to Mark, the polygraph measures our physiological channels such
as cardiovascular activity, respiratory activity, and electrodermal activity, which is
basically sweat secretion. One thing that really shocked me and
I think you as well when we talked to Mark
and he really walked us through the process of what
(11:25):
it looks like to give someone a polygraph test, and
he said it can take like four to six hours,
so long. Yeah, there's this whole long process of pretests
where you go through their medical history, you ask them
what medications they might be on, and give a full
evaluation of their sort of status quo I guess is
(11:47):
what it would be. He also walks them through the
case that he's investigating as well as goes through every
single question that he's going to ask during the polygraph,
so there's no surprises like gotcha questions in a polygraph.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Right, And the idea is that you're getting a totally
objective test. You know someone's physiological channels and the changes
that are occurring within those are not going to be
spiked by a surprise. The idea is that it's just
the mind realizing the body is lying.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So we also have to whomind. Mark was a profiler
as well, so criminal profiler, So it's like when he's
giving the test itself and the results, and he's also
evaluating someone the whole time, right. He kind of called
out all of those classic tropes of how you could
tell someone was telling a lie, like they look down
into the left, and he basically was like, none of
(12:42):
that is.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Real, because everyone going into a polygraph, probably especially with
an expert polygrapher who works for the FBI, no one's relaxed.
It's just about being able to get a sense of
a person's baseline and then watching for any deviation from that.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
When I have to go to the doctor and literally
just get my blood pressure taken, I'm nervous, so nervous
in that scenario. Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Went in for a blood draw the other day and
he was so nice, he was making small talk with me,
and I was just like, I have nothing, I'm nothing.
I'm just if I even breathe, I will run out
of here.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I have to just get through this. You and I
both would be nervous. Being polygraphed. Probably you even more
Probably I would fail even if I were innocent. But
what did Mark say to us, over and over and
over about nervousness?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Mark said that everybody is nervous. No one walks into
an FBI office, sits down, gets hooked up to a
polygraph machine, and is relaxed about it. It's only about
measuring the baseline for your nerves, and it's up to
the examiner to work out what that baseline is.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Right, And so he said it's fine. He's tested people
who are really nervous and people who are not, and
claims that he'll still get good results even with the nerves.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, and even when he is in the room polygraphing someone,
his whole goal is to get a clean chart, I think,
is how he referred to it. And for him to
do that, he has to ask questions in a way
that is very straightforward, nothing left up to interpretation, which
goes into that pretest element of a polygraph, where you're saying,
(14:29):
when I ask you this question, here's what I mean
by it, Yes, and not using words that might be
triggering for people that spike those changes in their baseline.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, Like he talked about going through the pretest with
them and making sure that there was no room for interpretation.
So it's like, were you at the bank last Friday
or something, and you know there could be a lot
of ways that you interpret that, or were you at
the bank last Friday morning? And it's like maybe you
we're there at eleven forty five and you're like, is
(15:02):
that morning? Could that be considered afternoon? So he goes
through and says, were you at you know, this specific
bank on this corner at this specific time, so that
there's absolutely no room for you to as you're thinking
about the answer and they're all yes and no questions
to be like well, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
No room for misinterpretation is the goal. And you know
also in asking the questions, it's a very sort of monotone, unemotional, not.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Were you at the bank?
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah? I thought it was interesting. He really differentiated between
like interrogation or interview and giving a polygraph test. He
said those are completely separate things, and in fact, you
cannot interrogate someone prior to giving them the test because
it would compromise the validity of the test. So you
have to be he's just like this calm collected guy.
(15:57):
Or you have to pick one, or you have to
pick one. Yeah, So today we're going to talk about
a case that Mark told me about. Well, I was
on a call with him a while back. I knew
we wanted to have him on the show, and he
told me, you know, I'd really love to talk to
you about the case of a young woman who went missing.
Her name was Echo May Wiles, and Mark's role as
(16:19):
an expert polygraph examiner played a major part in the
investigation into what happened to Echo.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I am retired special agent Mark, rising from the FBI.
I was an FBI agent for twenty nine and a
half years. I became an FBI polygraph examiner and I
held that position in North Carolina, so I was the
only one in this state for the FBI, and I
held that position for eighteen years. So by the time
I retired, I was the senior most FBI polyographic examiner
(16:52):
in the country, in the world.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So we did a full interview with Mark, and ultimately
you and I decided we didn't want to use that
interview for a full interview episode on the Knife, mainly
because we had a difficult time finding a lot of
information about Echo Wiles as a person. You made some calls,
did some outreach, it was just really difficult to find
(17:16):
any information about her. So we didn't feel great about
using that interview for a full interview episode because we
are really focused on victims stories and victims' rights. But
we found Mark's story really compelling, especially because of the
role the polygraph played in solving this case. We're going
to walk you through the case of Echo wiles disappearance
(17:37):
as well as our conversation with Mark, and we will
play a few clips from our interview.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Echo May Wiles was born on February eighth, nineteen eighty five.
There's not much written about her outside of her disappearance,
which you had already mentioned and not played a role
in why we're not going to do the entire interview today.
But Echo was married relatively young at age twenty, and
was living in Fort Riley, Kansas, which is a military base.
(18:12):
Her husband, Joshua Wiles, was a soldier and he was
on active duty. In August of two thousand and five,
Echo disappeared along with her car, and an investigation was
launched into what happened, but ultimately there were a few leads,
and her disappearance remained a mystery. Her husband was deployed
at the time. I believe he was overseas and he
(18:35):
was not a suspect in this case. You know, he naturally,
as a spouse, was on a list, but they never
had reason to think he was involved in her disappearance
or had knowledge of what happened. So, of course, when
someone goes missing, there is so much digging that goes
into their life to try to figure out who were
(18:56):
they associating with and why, how were they spending their time. Time,
every discoverable detail of someone's life gets drudged up, and
in this case, it did come out to investigators that
Echo was romantically involved in relationships outside of her marriage,
but with no body her car was nowhere to be found,
(19:18):
and you know, no real motive, no hard evidence. The
case went unsolved for five years. Well they didn't even
know that it was a crime at that point, right,
she was just gone. And the lead investigator on that case,
who worked for the army, actually retired in that time
that her case was going unsolved with no additional leads.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
It's got to feel so bad to retire with unsolved cases.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
That would be really hard because you know what we
came to learn from Marcus. She worked incredibly hard on
this case to try to bring closure to Echo's family,
to try to find her. Yeah, they did extensive work
in the beginning, interviewing people who knew Echo, were associated
with Echo, but she was just gone. And the first
(20:04):
break in the case came just by chance. It was
in April of twenty ten. Construction workers were draining a
body of water called Moon Lake, which is on Fort Riley,
and as the water lowered, they could see a car
antenna emerging. My gosh, I know, and the car was
in nineteen ninety seven Chevrolet Monte Carlo and that is
(20:27):
the kind of car that Echo Wiles was driving. Of course,
they have to do their due dilgence and make sure,
but the car did belong to Echo, and tragically, her
remains were found inside of.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
The vehicle, so she'd been there the whole time.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
She'd been there the entire time.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
At that point the investigation is reignited because now they
have remains and it's still not clear what happened. They
just have her remains in her car, but with evidence
they could examine for the first time in the case.
They actually brought back that retired Army investigator to come
back to work on it, and the remains were not
(21:04):
in a state where even a medical examiner could determine
the cause of death.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Oh wow, so you have remains now, but you have
no way of knowing how she died.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Right, But because of the remains being in the car,
they now had reason to suspect foul play, and that's
when they call Mark. Mark was brought in to assist
the Army on this case because he's an expert polygrapher,
and one thing that Mark explained to us is that
(21:36):
polygraph is an incredible tool for ruling people out as
much as it is finding someone who's guilty of a
crime and trying to be deceptive about it.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
When he told us that, one of the points he
made was that there's resources that have to go into
investigating all the people of interest in a case. Right,
so if you can rule someone out, then you're saving resources, money, personnel,
as well as a person who is innocent having to
have like their phone records reviewed, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Right and time, because you know, if you believe that
there's fell play, you're trying to get to the person
who's responsible.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So Mark was called in and he said, yes, absolutely,
he would assist. And the first person that he was
asked to polygraph was a man that Echo was known
to have had a romantic relationship with. And this person
was actually still on active duty but had since been
relocated to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and Mark hit
(22:42):
a speedbump as soon as he arrived. He said, when
he got there, they introduced him to this person and
he was under the impression that this person would be
unaware he was coming. And you know, we've spoken a
lot about how there's no surprises with polygraphs, but in
this specific situation and maybe other situations like this, the
(23:03):
idea is that Mark then has an opportunity to introduce
himself and let this person know how highly trained he is.
Because polygraphs are voluntary, so you know, there's nothing stopping
someone from saying nope, non interested in walking away.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, And it's also a point of information gathering, right,
Like the first time someone hears the question of will
you take a polygraph? In this case, he's reading their reaction.
Are they shocked like usually yes, but are they sort
of like okay, why would I or are they super resistant?
It's all potential information that could help inform his profiling
(23:44):
basically of the person, right.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
And that is the idea is he walks in and
he has an opportunity to say, my name is especially
Jim Mark Rossey, and here's all of my accreditations and experience,
and here's why you should take this test. But an
attorney who are for the army, because the soldier was
still an active duty, advised his client do not take
this polygraph. And so Mark is immediately like, okay, I
(24:09):
need to find a way to make this happen. And
we're going to play a clip for you from Mark
telling us about that moment.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
And I said, I'm going to have multiple people I
need to polygraph, and I'm here to clear your good
name as long as you didn't, you know, kill Echo.
And the look in his eyes he encounted to me
like you know you think I killed Echo? It just
had that ring to it. And I said, oh, do
you think I'm here because of the affair you had
with her? I said, I don't care about that. I said,
(24:37):
I'm just sure, you know, to make sure that you
didn't kill her, and he looked at me and I said,
but if we can't clear you with a polygraph, they'll
just keep digging into your past and going through your records.
And but that you're right, and he said, wait, wait
a minute. He said, listen, on second thought, I'd like
to take a polygraph.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Mark got him.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
He got him.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Mark got him to take a polygraph. A couple of
in the military, having an affair with a married person
is a punishable offense, and this man that Mark had
been asked a polygraph was still on active duty. So
whether or not he had anything to do with Echo's
disappearance or any knowledge of what happened to her, by
admitting that he had this romantic relationship, he could potentially
(25:19):
still face those consequences. So Mark knew this might be
concerning for him and just had to reassure him, I'm
not here because of the affair. He was there because
Echo's body was in that car. Although when we asked, Mark,
did you tell them that Echo's remains were founder in
the car? And he couldn't recall exactly with this first
(25:40):
polygraph that we're going to talk about, but he said
that because it had been published, he suspected that the
person knew why he was there because he was concerned
about the affair.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Right, so it was public knowledge at that point that
Echo's remains had been found, right, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
So they go ahead and do the polygraph, which again
consists of a lengthy pretest, the polygraph itself, and the
post test. And you know, these are a series of
yes or no answers. They're all questions asked multiple times.
And Mark is doing all of this to see if
he can get a quote unquote clean test. And so
(26:26):
Mark told us that he was able to get a
very clean test and it was clear to him in
the room that this guy had passed with flying colors,
is what he said. He talked about there being a
process of he can't really tell you in the room,
but he knew. And then it was quickly confirmed by
his associates that this guy passed the polygraph. This was
not the person who killed Echo. I imagine that was
(26:50):
a moment of extreme relief for this person.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
You gotta think, so, you gotta think. So.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
So Mark returns home and he communicates these as to
the army investigator. And you know, Mark said that in
his eighteen years of polygraphing, he ran somewhere between three
thousand and thirty five hundred polygraphs. He knows what a
past polygraph test looks like, but as you mentioned, he
(27:16):
can't say that in the room. And that's all just
part of this very strict process the FBI has where
an outside source has to look at it so that
they're going off only this chart and not a lingering suspicion.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
So then eventually he gets another call and it's from
that same lead investigator on the case that's with the military,
and she tells him that there is a second person
of interest in the case named Christopher Willoughby, and asks
if he is willing to go and do another polygraph.
By this time, it's December of twenty ten, about seven
(27:52):
months after Echo's remains were discovered, still five years after
she went missing.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right a little over five years after Echo had initially
gone missing. And at this time Chris Willoughby is in
his mid twenties and no longer active in the military.
So we have another clip from Mark talking about that
call requesting a second polygraph.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
So on the second polygraph, quite frankly, I was given
a very similar story. We found another soldier, former soldier
who is a civilian now that when he left for Roley, Kansas,
I don't know his direct path, but ultimately settled down
as a civilian in the Pensacola area, and we believe
that he may have had an ongoing affair at the
(28:39):
time of Echo's disappearance with Echo and would I be
willing to also give him a polygraph?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So Mark travels to Florida to meet Chris Willoughby in person,
and just like in the scenario of the first polygraph,
Mark introduces himself, speaks with Chris about his experience and asks, Chris,
are you willing to take a polygraph? You know, Chris
had also been known to be a romantic associate of Echoes,
(29:08):
and that was no longer a concern for Chris like
it was in the case of the First Soldier, because
at this point Chris is a civilian, right, so he
doesn't face any consequences for this extra marital relationship.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, but he still agrees to do the polygraph. And
not all polygraphs are recorded with video, but this one
was because it was an investigation run by the military,
and that was the military's process. I don't know always is,
but for this case it was so they were in
a room, you know. Same with this first polygraph, everything
was captured on video.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Right, and that was not a FBI process at the time,
so that was just completely set up by the Army.
Mark was going to go in and do the polygraph.
Either way, let's get into the clip.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
So a lot of backgrounds being done in this case
between Chris and I and then we start reviewing the case.
You can't give a polygraph without talking about the case,
and we did. We spent some time talking about the case,
and somewhere in this we referred to as the pretest,
the pre polygraph examination, the pre test interview in order
(30:13):
to give a fair, unbiased polygraph. It's just a discussion.
I'm asking them some questions. I'm answering any questions they
have with me. But somewhere in that pre test interview,
Chris Willoughby turned to me and out of nowhere, and
it wasn't in response to anything I asked him, and
he said, he let out a little phrase something like this,
(30:36):
I can still smell her perfume.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, you know, talking to Mark, A lot of years
have passed since these polygraphs, and we asked him a
lot of specific questions as we typically do. And you
know Mark always was like, oh, I can't quite recall
or maybe around this time he remembered that comment from
Chris so clearly.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, I mean it's such a bizarre comment that it
was an immediate red flag to him, right.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Because he's got this whole career as an FBI agent,
a criminal profiler.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
He knows. Yeah, it's not just like a flippant comment
that someone would say, right for no reason.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, And so you know, it'd been five years at
this point since Echo had disappeared, so to recall her perfume,
and also you know, I wasn't there, and I'm speculating,
I guess, but you're speaking with an FBI agent and
that slips out just an astonishing moment for Mark. But
his training, Marks training has brought him to this place
(31:38):
of being able to appear totally neutral even if he's
majorly flagging something like a very strange comment.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
He can be internally shocked, but he doesn't show that
on his face at all, because he wants whoever he's
talking to to give him as much information as possible,
to be very comfortable and see him almost like a
friend that he can talk to.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Right, someone who's only there to conduct a polygraph and
not there to determine guilt, right, not there to get
the guilt out of someone, but to just get the truth.
So Mark flags this comment super unsettling, and he briefly
contemplates abandoning the polygraph and going into an interrogation to
(32:22):
try to get a confession, to try to get a confession.
But you know, there comes another point in this pretest
where that decision ends up being made for him, And
we're going to play that clip from Mark.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
I'm going to be honest with you, there comes a point,
at least for me. But I know, in speaking to
all these other FBI polygamers and other POLU presammers, where
you have to decide are we even giving a polygraph today?
Because there's nothing to prevent you from just going into
an interrogation. But once you start an interrogation, you're done.
(32:56):
There is no polygraph. In other words, you can't go
after some one and say, hey, listen, I've got reason
to believe you did this thing, and we need to
dig deeper and then come back and say okay, and
now I'm going to give you a fair, unbiased pelt.
You can't do that. So my brain is going, do
I go for it now? Because I think he did it?
Do I go for it now?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
But Mark said that right as he was thinking that,
Chris turned to him and asked if they could go
outside and have a cigarette. Mark doesn't smoke, but he
was like great, So they go outside, and he said
that Chris was chain smoking and pacing around the parking
lot really quickly. Mark was like, you know, worked on
the SWAT team for years, but was like, you know,
rushing to keep up with him. And he's thinking, okay,
(33:38):
maybe this is another sign I should go for an interrogation.
But then Chris finishes his cigarette, goes back inside and says, okay,
I'm ready for my polygraph, And so Mark thought, all right,
well he asked for it, he wants to do the polygraph.
Let's just do it. Let's do it and see how
this goes.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
So Mark proceeds, and here's a clip where Mark talks
a little bit more about the process and specifically with Chris,
who had already sort of given him a few maybe
warning signals.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
You can't ask about a murder, but you can ask
about did when you don't have any remains? Did you
directly cause the disappearance or when you have remains, did
you cause her too either disappeared? Did you cause you
know anything to do with the lake, anything to do
with the car. The more specific the better, based on
(34:31):
how much you know in that way, again, their mind
doesn't have Witherer room. So again exactly what the phraseology
was with him, But the bottom line was it was
a in there in that set of questions is did
you do it? And as I'm watching it come across,
it's not funny, haha. But when you're giving them and
you know you've got to run three or four times,
and the first time you run it, you look up
(34:53):
and your brain goes again, she's my language, Oh shit,
he killed her, And you're saying, okay, and now we're
going to take a break and get ready to run
it again.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
So they run it again and again, and Mark goes
through these very pointed yes or no questions, and eventually
they come to a place where Mark's been watching his
body language, but mostly Mark is watching his charts, and
they come to the end of the polygraph and Mark
(35:25):
SE's indications of deception. Mark makes a decision during the
post test to just level with Chris Willoughby and tell him,
you know, I have to send these back to the
office for an outside person to make the final determination
on the test. But I think that.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
You have failed. And this is the post test, So
anything in the actual polygraph is not admissible in court,
but the pretest and the post test are. And so
here is this next clip mark explaining exactly what happened.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Next, I let him know we're done with the test.
I take the equipment off, and then we go into
our post test setup. It's time to see if he's
willing to tell you what he's done. So that's where
the conversation begins. And basically, at some point you got
to stop with you know, are you sure you didn't.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (36:21):
You know it's a I've reviewed my charts and I
know what I'm looking at. And Chris, I wasn't there,
but you were, and you need to tell me what
happened that day. So I don't remember exactly how Chriss
went with the bottom line is when I told him
(36:41):
that he had failed his polygraph. And again, to be honest,
I don't remember exactly how it happened, but at some
point he just looks up and says, I'm going to
tell you what happened.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Wow, And it's important to remember they're still recording and
just outside the room that army and investigator is watching
this all happen.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Who has been working on this case before she retired,
then a few years of her retirement back on the case,
and really they had a few persons of interest, but
no DNA evidence, no real leads. And now Mark is
sitting here across from this guy who's saying, I'm going
to tell you what happened.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
And Mark knows that he has details not released to
the press that covered the discovery of echoes remains, and
so he's now going into the mode of Okay, so
he's gonna tell me what happened, and I have details
that only people working on the investigation or someone who
(37:44):
was there and involved would know. To make sure that
it's not a false confession. It's not a false confession.
There's no way to back out of it if you
have that information. So Mark proceeds.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
But what he tells me what happens is this he
knew Echo to be pregnant with his children, with Chris's children,
twins actually, and that he loved her so much that
(38:19):
he had approached her and begged her to run away
with him and not stay with her husband, who was
again oversees at the point of this conversation that took
place years prior, and he tells me, I wouldn't have
any other way of knowing. He tells me that she
tells him that the husband had been home for a
(38:43):
home visit. That wouldn't have made it impossible that the
husband impregnated her. And so Echo tells Chris, this is
all per Chris. This is the only place I got
it from. Echo tells Chris, I'm going with that story.
He's to never know about you. He's to never know
you're the father of the children, because no, I'm not
(39:07):
going to run away with you. I'm going to carry
on with my husband when he comes back, etc.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
So she says, I'm going to have these kids and
say that they're my husbands.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Yes, And this all takes place either the day prior
or the day that Chris will be is exiting the military.
His time of service is up. Coincidentally, well, I don't
know coincidentally. I'm just saying it comes to a head.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
I see you, okay.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
In other words, Hey, I'm leaving base. I want you
to leave with me. You're going to have our children,
and you're going to let your husband know you're leaving him,
and you're coming with me. And this is what I'm
getting from Chris. Now. The investigator backed up the fact
that they had medical records to show she was pregnant,
(39:56):
that she'd been visiting a doctor, things like that, but
the very specifics of what Chris said, we didn't know
because all you have here skeletal remains, so it's not
like we had a DNA test available to show us
they had to be his children. Chris tell me they're
his children. And apparently what happens is it comes to
a head per Chris, and when he says you're coming
(40:20):
with me, and she says, no, I'm not. He went
into graphic details with me. He said, you know, I
remember putting my hands around her neck and around her
throat and just squeezing.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
You know, I can't imagine being in Mark's position in
that moment and just keeping a straight face and a
calm demeanor. It's the work that you're doing. So in
a sense, you're relieved that you've now got a confession
from someone that lines up with what you know to
be true about the remains, because Chris revealed to Mark
(40:58):
that he seat Belted's body into the back seat when
he pushed her car into the lake. And that was
really the piece that solidified Chris Willoughby's confession as being
truthful to the investigators, because.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
So unusual you would think that if someone drove into
a lake, obviously they'd be in the driver's seat. She
was in the back seat, seat belted in.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Yeah, certainly, not seat belted in in the back seat.
I mean, the remains were still seat belted in when
they found the car, and so no one outside of
anyone who had been working on the case knew that information.
So in this particular instance, a polygraph led to a
murder confession and Chris Willoughby was arrested. He had federal
(41:44):
charges first and then eventually for the murder of Echo Wiles.
Chris was federally charged with concealing the body of Echo
Maywiles in the car and sinking the car, failing to
report the theft of wiles car to authorities, stealing her car,
obtained control of Echoile's dead body, entering a military installation
(42:04):
for unlawful purpose, and then the state filed their own
charge murder in the second degree, and Chris was sentenced
on July twenty first, twenty eleven. But we actually found
something very surprising to both of us when we looked
into it.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, Chris was actually released in twenty twenty two. According
to the Kansas Criminal Justice Information System, which we were
able to access online, Chris will be status changed to
in state post release on May twentieth, twenty twenty two,
and then changed again on May twenty fourth, twenty twenty
two to sentence expired. So he is out, and it
(42:44):
feels like not enough time for having killed someone, you know.
I don't know if this goes into the fact that
Echo really didn't have a lot of family and a
lot of people to sort of speak out for her.
One of the things that Mark told us was that
that leading investigator, she was so thrilled that this was
solved for the few people in Echos lives that were wondering,
(43:06):
you know, but Echo didn't come from a lot of means,
and so that investigator actually like raised money to bury
echos remains. And I'm so glad that this case was solved.
It's horrible how she died. You know, it's horrible, even
the way that he described that he loved her so
much and was so possessive and then he killed her,
Like that's not okay, that's really screwed up. Even though
(43:29):
she didn't have a lot of family, her life still mattered.
And I'm glad that they were able to solve the case.
And I don't know why he didn't serve his whole time.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah, so hard to understand how someone could feel that
level of entitlement to another human being. And it's hard
to comprehend someone out there living their life really only
a little over ten years of serving time.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
So we also asked Mark a lot of other questions
we had about polygraphs, and you know, Hannah, you had
read a book recently about sociopaths. I'm obsessed with sociopaths.
Hannah's obsessed with sociopaths. What did you learn?
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So I asked Mark, how would a sociopath do if
they were given a polygraph test? My thinking was maybe
they could pass it more easily, but he actually said
that in his opinion, you know, he's done a lot
of tests that he found that sociopaths and psychopaths were
easier to test in some ways, even though they maybe
(44:35):
don't get nervous. He said, it's really about memory recall.
He said that if he's asking about a specific incident, about,
you know, robbing a bank for example, well, he said,
sociopaths have great memories, and oftentimes in his experience, when
he would interview someone or give someone a polygraph test
a sociopath, they would maybe have thought about it a lot,
(44:58):
almost like a victory, like revel in that right, And
so the recall is so crystal clear. If he says,
did you rob this bank, He's like, even if it's
just such a quick flash through your mind, you see
the scared teller's eyes, you see them handing you the money.
You know, all of it is so clear, and that
(45:18):
will be reflected in your physiological responses. And he basically
said he could give almost anyone a polygraph test because
it actually calls right back to his initial reader's digest
explanation of polygraphing, which is the mind detecting when the
body is lying. And so if you're a sociopath, with
all of this visual imagery happening in your mind as
(45:39):
you're being asked the question, you're watching that all play
out and your body is telling a different story. Yeah,
still doesn't quite make sense to me, because I don't
think that sociopaths care that they're telling a lie. But
maybe there's still some kind of physiological response.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, the question of how a sociopath could ever be
I think Mark referred to sociopaths as the easiest people. Yeah,
he did to give lie detector tests.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's reference.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
His reference is sociopaths. Yeah, because of their recall of
these situations and that being helpful to him. But yeah, surprising.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
I quickly did want to say, you know, just because
we're talking about polygraphs, there have been instances of people
in the past who have successfully tricked a polygraph test,
guilty people who pass them, as well as innocent people
who did not pass them. So we're not here advocating
(46:36):
that polygraphs are perfect or that they should be admissible
in court. I think there's a really good reason why
they're not. But and that's something Mark agreed with when
we were speaking with him. He was like, polygraphs are
not perfect. It makes total sense that these are not admissible. Yeah,
but they can be a useful tool for investigator.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Well, you know it's a tragic story, but it's amazing
that Mark was able to help bring closure to this
case for Echo's family. And I did reach out to
Chris Wellaby as well since we're mentioning him and did
not hear back.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
I am really glad to have learned about the case
of Echo Wiles, and I feel like I also learned
a lot about the polygraph test this week. If you
have any opinions about polygraph tests or specific stories in
your life that relates to it, or questions about it,
send him in. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks
for listening. We'll be back next week. If you have
(47:33):
a story for us, we would love to hear it.
Our email is The Knife at exactly rightmedia dot com,
or you can follow us on Instagram at the Knife
Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast. This has
been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced by me
Hannah Smith.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
And me Pasha Ey. Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and
Alexis Samarosi.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport. Artwork
Vanessa Lilac Executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and
Daniel Kramer.
This story contains adult content and language. Listener discretion is advised. Hello,
(00:20):
and welcome to the Knife Off Record. I'm Patia Eaton.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
I'm Hannah Smith. On today's episode, we're going to cover
the case of Echo May Wiles's disappearance. We're going to
reference an interview we did with a retired FBI special agent.
We are going to skip recommendations and listeners questions this week. Instead,
we are going to ask a very important question. How
do you know if someone is lying to you? I mean,
(00:47):
this is really something everyone would love to know. I
personally think I'm pretty good at it. Doesn't everybody think
that they're going to do Maybe everybody thinks that. I
feel like that's the problem. Actually is everyone thinks they're
really good at.
Speaker 1 (01:00):
It, Like you could never fool me.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
Yeah, it can be a very difficult thing to know
if someone is telling you the truth.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
And you know, we have been researching this a lot
because we recently spoke with a retired FBI agent by
the name of Mark Rossey, who's an expert polygraph examiner.
Mark was brought in on a case the disappearance of
Echo May Wiles, which actually turned into a murder investigation.
So first we're just going to talk about polygraphs and
(01:27):
what does someone think of when they think of a polygraph.
Speaker 2 (01:30):
My mind goes to like people in a basement, someone
strapped up to a machine sweating, and then there's like
a piece of paper and a machine and like what
do you call that? Like a little wire going crazy
and an angry person on either side who's like.
Speaker 1 (01:44):
You're lying, and terrible lighting. Always, oh, terrible lighting for me.
I also think of puppy Gate, Hannah, puppy Gate, puppy Gate.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Okay, So for those.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
Who don't know, I've been trying to get Hannah to
watch the Real House Size Above Hills or really any
franchise unsuccessfully since we met.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
Hasn't happened yet.
Speaker 1 (02:04):
Hasn't happened. So I'm just going to tell you about
puppy Gate.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Okay, great.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
So Lisa vander Pump, who was a cast member on
the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills before leaving the show,
she has a dog rescue and another cast member, Dereete,
adopted a dog from that rescue. Okay, so here's where
things get a little murky. The dog was re homed
(02:28):
by Derete to someone else who then dropped the dog
off at a shelter. So why this is super bad
other than that nobody wants to drop their dog off
at a shelter, is that with dog rescue, you're usually
signing something in an adoption agreement that says, if anything
goes wrong, I'm going to bring you the dog back
so that they can make sure that dog never ends
(02:50):
up in a shelter again.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
So that was the expectation that DeWitt would do that
if she didn't want.
Speaker 1 (02:54):
The dog exactly, and the dog had I think bitten
people in her household or shown aggression and that's why
she rehomed the dog to someone she thought was going
to keep it. And so the story gets out that
Lucy Apple Juice the dog was given to a shelter,
and it becomes this like highly sensationalized story that points
(03:17):
a finger at Dery for, you know, sort of callously
getting rid of this rescue dog. And the allegation on
the show from the other cast members was that Lisa
vander Pump planted the story to get back at Derret's.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Oh my gosh, the drama.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
The drama.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
So Lisa, to clear her good name, takes a polygraph test.
So the woman who owns the dog rescue did a
light detector test.
Speaker 1 (03:42):
She did a lie detector test that she set up,
and it's on the show and she walks in there
and I'm pretty sure she brings her little dog with
her and she sits down. A man asks her a
series of questions and she leaves and did she pass?
She did? She passed with flying colors.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
So, as we've now come to learn, this is not
what polygraphs actually are, but they actually have a long
history and sort of a complicated public perception because of
a lot of things we're going to talk about. The
probably biggest reason for that is that they're not admissible
in court. So why don't you tell us a little
(04:23):
bit about the history of polygraphs.
Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, I feel like it's a storied history in a
lot of ways, because we do we see these images
on television shows and it's just hard to tell how
scientific it is really. There were really early iterations of
this kind of test in the even late seventeen hundreds
and early eighteen hundreds, but the first machine that is
(04:47):
similar to what we have today was invented in nineteen
fifteen by an American psychologist and author William M. Marston,
and it was basically just like a blood pressure monitoring
system that he used to try to determine if someone
was deceiving someone else. And then it was updated in
nineteen twenty one by a physiologist, John A. Larson, who
(05:08):
was also a policeman for the Berkeley, California Police Department,
and his test was a little bit more advanced and
very similar actually to what we have today. So along
with blood pressure, it also measures your breathing and your
pulse and your sweat, like how much you're sweating. And
he incorporated into the Berkeley, California Police departments police interviewing process,
(05:32):
and for a time for a few years, there was
a lot of excitement around that because it was seen
as this new scientific technology that could prove that someone
was either telling a truth or a lie, and everyone
was really excited about it, and in some ways it
was seen as a more humane way to interview suspects
(05:53):
because there was a lot of police using violence, beating
a confession out of someone, if you will, So this
was is a more humane way to question someone and
get an answer. There was kind of immediately though also
skeptics who said, well, how scientific is this really? And
then the first time it appeared in court was nineteen
(06:14):
twenty three, so two years later and it appeared in
a criminal court case Fry versus the United States. James
Alfonso Fry was charged with the murder of a prominent
doctor in Washington, DC, doctor R. W. Brown, who was
shot outside his home in nineteen twenty. Doctor Brown's family
offered a one thousand dollars reward for anyone who could
(06:34):
name the shooter, but for about a year there were
no leads in the case, and then suddenly this guy
in his twenties, James Fry, gets questioned by the police
for other crimes forgery and theft, and somehow at the
end of that he ends up confessing to the murder
of doctor Brown. So he's charged with the murder. The
case goes to trial, but then he gets his defense
(06:56):
attorneys and he tells them he doesn't have anything to
do with them, but he had planned to split the
reward money with the detective who questioned him, and he
said that's why he confessed. Yikes, who knows. But his
attorneys were not in a good place because he had confessed,
so they looked around and they found this guy, William Marston,
(07:17):
the psychologist, the guy who invented the early version of
the polygraph, and convinced him to come on. He gave
Fry a polygraph test and you know, came to the
conclusion that he had given a false confession. They tried
to submit it as evidence, but ultimately the judge denied that,
basically saying that, you know, if scientific technology is going
(07:40):
to be used in a court case, it needs to
be generally accepted as reliable in the scientific community, and
this was not, and that ends up becoming known as
the Fry standard. So, unfortunately, James Fry was convicted of
second degree murder and served eighteen years in prison. One
thing to note that I thought was interesting about who's
the psychologist that they brought in. He was also an
(08:03):
author and years later, in nineteen forty one, he invented
the comic book character wonder Woman. Okay, jack of all trades,
I know, right, Like, how many things can this guy do?
But one of Wonder Woman's magical powers is that she
has a golden lasso called the Lasso of Truth, and
when she ropes someone with it, they're forced to tell
her the truth. Okay, so call back to the light
detector test.
Speaker 3 (08:23):
Nice.
Speaker 2 (08:24):
Yeah, he's like clearly really interested as we all are,
in this idea. If you had an ability to tell
for sure that someone was telling you the truth or
a lie, it would be so useful. I mean, it's
like so much of crime and what we talk about
and convictions, it's like we're trying to get to the
(08:45):
truth and it's a really difficult thing to get to and.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
For law enforcement, they're so reliant on evidence as they
ought to be. But you know, if someone maybe did
a good job hiding that evidence, but you could still
take a light detector test and get them on that,
that would be case closed for so many investigations.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
I mean easy. Yeah, wouldn't that be nice?
Speaker 1 (09:09):
Wouldn't that be nice? You know, in the case that
we're going to talk about today, it maybe had some
similarities to the James Fry case in that there were
no leads for a long time and eventually the investigation
was picked back up again and a light detector played
a really big role in closing that case. Yeah, which
(09:30):
I'm excited to get to that.
Speaker 2 (09:32):
One last thing just about you know the history of
the polygraph in nineteen sixty five, there was a US
Committee on Government Operations that did an evaluation of the
polygraph machine and concluded, quote, there is no light detector,
neither man nor machine. People have been deceived by a
myth that a metal box in the hands of an
(09:53):
investigator can detect truth or falsehood. And then there was
another study in two thousand and three by the US
National Research Council which basically said that the results are
better than flipping a coin. Some critics have said the
results are fifty to fifty, it's basically like you're flipping
a coin. This research study basically said that's not true.
(10:16):
The accuracy levels are above fifty percent, more like sixty,
but still that's not great. There's a lot of room
for great and that's something that Mark actually spoke to
us a lot about which we'll get into, which is
the very wide spectrum of experts within polygraphing. So we
(10:38):
actually interviewed a retired FBI special agent, Mark Rozzi, who
was in the FBI for twenty nine and a half
years and had a variety of specialties.
Speaker 1 (10:47):
During that time. He was a profiler, worked on the
SWAT team, and then became a federal polygraph examiner Mark
summarized polygraphs as it's basically what the body does when
the mind realizes you're telling a lie.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
According to Mark, the polygraph measures our physiological channels such
as cardiovascular activity, respiratory activity, and electrodermal activity, which is
basically sweat secretion. One thing that really shocked me and
I think you as well when we talked to Mark
and he really walked us through the process of what
(11:25):
it looks like to give someone a polygraph test, and
he said it can take like four to six hours,
so long. Yeah, there's this whole long process of pretests
where you go through their medical history, you ask them
what medications they might be on, and give a full
evaluation of their sort of status quo I guess is
(11:47):
what it would be. He also walks them through the
case that he's investigating as well as goes through every
single question that he's going to ask during the polygraph,
so there's no surprises like gotcha questions in a polygraph.
Speaker 1 (12:04):
Right, And the idea is that you're getting a totally
objective test. You know someone's physiological channels and the changes
that are occurring within those are not going to be
spiked by a surprise. The idea is that it's just
the mind realizing the body is lying.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
So we also have to whomind. Mark was a profiler
as well, so criminal profiler, So it's like when he's
giving the test itself and the results, and he's also
evaluating someone the whole time, right. He kind of called
out all of those classic tropes of how you could
tell someone was telling a lie, like they look down
into the left, and he basically was like, none of
(12:42):
that is.
Speaker 1 (12:43):
Real, because everyone going into a polygraph, probably especially with
an expert polygrapher who works for the FBI, no one's relaxed.
It's just about being able to get a sense of
a person's baseline and then watching for any deviation from that.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
When I have to go to the doctor and literally
just get my blood pressure taken, I'm nervous, so nervous
in that scenario. Oh yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (13:10):
Went in for a blood draw the other day and
he was so nice, he was making small talk with me,
and I was just like, I have nothing, I'm nothing.
I'm just if I even breathe, I will run out
of here.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
I have to just get through this. You and I
both would be nervous. Being polygraphed. Probably you even more
Probably I would fail even if I were innocent. But
what did Mark say to us, over and over and
over about nervousness?
Speaker 1 (13:35):
Mark said that everybody is nervous. No one walks into
an FBI office, sits down, gets hooked up to a
polygraph machine, and is relaxed about it. It's only about
measuring the baseline for your nerves, and it's up to
the examiner to work out what that baseline is.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Right, And so he said it's fine. He's tested people
who are really nervous and people who are not, and
claims that he'll still get good results even with the nerves.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, and even when he is in the room polygraphing someone,
his whole goal is to get a clean chart, I think,
is how he referred to it. And for him to
do that, he has to ask questions in a way
that is very straightforward, nothing left up to interpretation, which
goes into that pretest element of a polygraph, where you're saying,
(14:29):
when I ask you this question, here's what I mean
by it, Yes, and not using words that might be
triggering for people that spike those changes in their baseline.
Speaker 2 (14:41):
Yeah, Like he talked about going through the pretest with
them and making sure that there was no room for interpretation.
So it's like, were you at the bank last Friday
or something, and you know there could be a lot
of ways that you interpret that, or were you at
the bank last Friday morning? And it's like maybe you
we're there at eleven forty five and you're like, is
(15:02):
that morning? Could that be considered afternoon? So he goes
through and says, were you at you know, this specific
bank on this corner at this specific time, so that
there's absolutely no room for you to as you're thinking
about the answer and they're all yes and no questions
to be like well, I don't know, I don't know.
Speaker 1 (15:20):
No room for misinterpretation is the goal. And you know
also in asking the questions, it's a very sort of monotone, unemotional, not.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Were you at the bank?
Speaker 1 (15:31):
Right?
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yeah? I thought it was interesting. He really differentiated between
like interrogation or interview and giving a polygraph test. He
said those are completely separate things, and in fact, you
cannot interrogate someone prior to giving them the test because
it would compromise the validity of the test. So you
have to be he's just like this calm collected guy.
(15:57):
Or you have to pick one, or you have to
pick one. Yeah, So today we're going to talk about
a case that Mark told me about. Well, I was
on a call with him a while back. I knew
we wanted to have him on the show, and he
told me, you know, I'd really love to talk to
you about the case of a young woman who went missing.
Her name was Echo May Wiles, and Mark's role as
(16:19):
an expert polygraph examiner played a major part in the
investigation into what happened to Echo.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
I am retired special agent Mark, rising from the FBI.
I was an FBI agent for twenty nine and a
half years. I became an FBI polygraph examiner and I
held that position in North Carolina, so I was the
only one in this state for the FBI, and I
held that position for eighteen years. So by the time
I retired, I was the senior most FBI polyographic examiner
(16:52):
in the country, in the world.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
So we did a full interview with Mark, and ultimately
you and I decided we didn't want to use that
interview for a full interview episode on the Knife, mainly
because we had a difficult time finding a lot of
information about Echo Wiles as a person. You made some calls,
did some outreach, it was just really difficult to find
(17:16):
any information about her. So we didn't feel great about
using that interview for a full interview episode because we
are really focused on victims stories and victims' rights. But
we found Mark's story really compelling, especially because of the
role the polygraph played in solving this case. We're going
to walk you through the case of Echo wiles disappearance
(17:37):
as well as our conversation with Mark, and we will
play a few clips from our interview.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Echo May Wiles was born on February eighth, nineteen eighty five.
There's not much written about her outside of her disappearance,
which you had already mentioned and not played a role
in why we're not going to do the entire interview today.
But Echo was married relatively young at age twenty, and
was living in Fort Riley, Kansas, which is a military base.
(18:12):
Her husband, Joshua Wiles, was a soldier and he was
on active duty. In August of two thousand and five,
Echo disappeared along with her car, and an investigation was
launched into what happened, but ultimately there were a few leads,
and her disappearance remained a mystery. Her husband was deployed
at the time. I believe he was overseas and he
(18:35):
was not a suspect in this case. You know, he naturally,
as a spouse, was on a list, but they never
had reason to think he was involved in her disappearance
or had knowledge of what happened. So, of course, when
someone goes missing, there is so much digging that goes
into their life to try to figure out who were
(18:56):
they associating with and why, how were they spending their time. Time,
every discoverable detail of someone's life gets drudged up, and
in this case, it did come out to investigators that
Echo was romantically involved in relationships outside of her marriage,
but with no body her car was nowhere to be found,
(19:18):
and you know, no real motive, no hard evidence. The
case went unsolved for five years. Well they didn't even
know that it was a crime at that point, right,
she was just gone. And the lead investigator on that case,
who worked for the army, actually retired in that time
that her case was going unsolved with no additional leads.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
It's got to feel so bad to retire with unsolved cases.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
That would be really hard because you know what we
came to learn from Marcus. She worked incredibly hard on
this case to try to bring closure to Echo's family,
to try to find her. Yeah, they did extensive work
in the beginning, interviewing people who knew Echo, were associated
with Echo, but she was just gone. And the first
(20:04):
break in the case came just by chance. It was
in April of twenty ten. Construction workers were draining a
body of water called Moon Lake, which is on Fort Riley,
and as the water lowered, they could see a car
antenna emerging. My gosh, I know, and the car was
in nineteen ninety seven Chevrolet Monte Carlo and that is
(20:27):
the kind of car that Echo Wiles was driving. Of course,
they have to do their due dilgence and make sure,
but the car did belong to Echo, and tragically, her
remains were found inside of.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
The vehicle, so she'd been there the whole time.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
She'd been there the entire time.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
You know.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
At that point the investigation is reignited because now they
have remains and it's still not clear what happened. They
just have her remains in her car, but with evidence
they could examine for the first time in the case.
They actually brought back that retired Army investigator to come
back to work on it, and the remains were not
(21:04):
in a state where even a medical examiner could determine
the cause of death.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Oh wow, so you have remains now, but you have
no way of knowing how she died.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
Right, But because of the remains being in the car,
they now had reason to suspect foul play, and that's
when they call Mark. Mark was brought in to assist
the Army on this case because he's an expert polygrapher,
and one thing that Mark explained to us is that
(21:36):
polygraph is an incredible tool for ruling people out as
much as it is finding someone who's guilty of a
crime and trying to be deceptive about it.
Speaker 2 (21:49):
When he told us that, one of the points he
made was that there's resources that have to go into
investigating all the people of interest in a case. Right,
so if you can rule someone out, then you're saving resources, money, personnel,
as well as a person who is innocent having to
have like their phone records reviewed, et cetera.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Right and time, because you know, if you believe that
there's fell play, you're trying to get to the person
who's responsible.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
So Mark was called in and he said, yes, absolutely,
he would assist. And the first person that he was
asked to polygraph was a man that Echo was known
to have had a romantic relationship with. And this person
was actually still on active duty but had since been
relocated to Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and Mark hit
(22:42):
a speedbump as soon as he arrived. He said, when
he got there, they introduced him to this person and
he was under the impression that this person would be
unaware he was coming. And you know, we've spoken a
lot about how there's no surprises with polygraphs, but in
this specific situation and maybe other situations like this, the
(23:03):
idea is that Mark then has an opportunity to introduce
himself and let this person know how highly trained he is.
Because polygraphs are voluntary, so you know, there's nothing stopping
someone from saying nope, non interested in walking away.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, And it's also a point of information gathering, right,
Like the first time someone hears the question of will
you take a polygraph? In this case, he's reading their reaction.
Are they shocked like usually yes, but are they sort
of like okay, why would I or are they super resistant?
It's all potential information that could help inform his profiling
(23:44):
basically of the person, right.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
And that is the idea is he walks in and
he has an opportunity to say, my name is especially
Jim Mark Rossey, and here's all of my accreditations and experience,
and here's why you should take this test. But an
attorney who are for the army, because the soldier was
still an active duty, advised his client do not take
this polygraph. And so Mark is immediately like, okay, I
(24:09):
need to find a way to make this happen. And
we're going to play a clip for you from Mark
telling us about that moment.
Speaker 3 (24:16):
And I said, I'm going to have multiple people I
need to polygraph, and I'm here to clear your good
name as long as you didn't, you know, kill Echo.
And the look in his eyes he encounted to me
like you know you think I killed Echo? It just
had that ring to it. And I said, oh, do
you think I'm here because of the affair you had
with her? I said, I don't care about that. I said,
(24:37):
I'm just sure, you know, to make sure that you
didn't kill her, and he looked at me and I said,
but if we can't clear you with a polygraph, they'll
just keep digging into your past and going through your records.
And but that you're right, and he said, wait, wait
a minute. He said, listen, on second thought, I'd like
to take a polygraph.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
Mark got him.
Speaker 2 (24:56):
He got him.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Mark got him to take a polygraph. A couple of
in the military, having an affair with a married person
is a punishable offense, and this man that Mark had
been asked a polygraph was still on active duty. So
whether or not he had anything to do with Echo's
disappearance or any knowledge of what happened to her, by
admitting that he had this romantic relationship, he could potentially
(25:19):
still face those consequences. So Mark knew this might be
concerning for him and just had to reassure him, I'm
not here because of the affair. He was there because
Echo's body was in that car. Although when we asked, Mark,
did you tell them that Echo's remains were founder in
the car? And he couldn't recall exactly with this first
(25:40):
polygraph that we're going to talk about, but he said
that because it had been published, he suspected that the
person knew why he was there because he was concerned
about the affair.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Right, so it was public knowledge at that point that
Echo's remains had been found, right, gotcha.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
So they go ahead and do the polygraph, which again
consists of a lengthy pretest, the polygraph itself, and the
post test. And you know, these are a series of
yes or no answers. They're all questions asked multiple times.
And Mark is doing all of this to see if
he can get a quote unquote clean test. And so
(26:26):
Mark told us that he was able to get a
very clean test and it was clear to him in
the room that this guy had passed with flying colors,
is what he said. He talked about there being a
process of he can't really tell you in the room,
but he knew. And then it was quickly confirmed by
his associates that this guy passed the polygraph. This was
not the person who killed Echo. I imagine that was
(26:50):
a moment of extreme relief for this person.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
You gotta think, so, you gotta think. So.
Speaker 1 (26:55):
So Mark returns home and he communicates these as to
the army investigator. And you know, Mark said that in
his eighteen years of polygraphing, he ran somewhere between three
thousand and thirty five hundred polygraphs. He knows what a
past polygraph test looks like, but as you mentioned, he
(27:16):
can't say that in the room. And that's all just
part of this very strict process the FBI has where
an outside source has to look at it so that
they're going off only this chart and not a lingering suspicion.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
So then eventually he gets another call and it's from
that same lead investigator on the case that's with the military,
and she tells him that there is a second person
of interest in the case named Christopher Willoughby, and asks
if he is willing to go and do another polygraph.
By this time, it's December of twenty ten, about seven
(27:52):
months after Echo's remains were discovered, still five years after
she went missing.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Right a little over five years after Echo had initially
gone missing. And at this time Chris Willoughby is in
his mid twenties and no longer active in the military.
So we have another clip from Mark talking about that
call requesting a second polygraph.
Speaker 3 (28:17):
So on the second polygraph, quite frankly, I was given
a very similar story. We found another soldier, former soldier
who is a civilian now that when he left for Roley, Kansas,
I don't know his direct path, but ultimately settled down
as a civilian in the Pensacola area, and we believe
that he may have had an ongoing affair at the
(28:39):
time of Echo's disappearance with Echo and would I be
willing to also give him a polygraph?
Speaker 1 (28:46):
So Mark travels to Florida to meet Chris Willoughby in person,
and just like in the scenario of the first polygraph,
Mark introduces himself, speaks with Chris about his experience and asks, Chris,
are you willing to take a polygraph? You know, Chris
had also been known to be a romantic associate of Echoes,
(29:08):
and that was no longer a concern for Chris like
it was in the case of the First Soldier, because
at this point Chris is a civilian, right, so he
doesn't face any consequences for this extra marital relationship.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Yeah, but he still agrees to do the polygraph. And
not all polygraphs are recorded with video, but this one
was because it was an investigation run by the military,
and that was the military's process. I don't know always is,
but for this case it was so they were in
a room, you know. Same with this first polygraph, everything
was captured on video.
Speaker 1 (29:40):
Right, and that was not a FBI process at the time,
so that was just completely set up by the Army.
Mark was going to go in and do the polygraph.
Either way, let's get into the clip.
Speaker 3 (29:51):
So a lot of backgrounds being done in this case
between Chris and I and then we start reviewing the case.
You can't give a polygraph without talking about the case,
and we did. We spent some time talking about the case,
and somewhere in this we referred to as the pretest,
the pre polygraph examination, the pre test interview in order
(30:13):
to give a fair, unbiased polygraph. It's just a discussion.
I'm asking them some questions. I'm answering any questions they
have with me. But somewhere in that pre test interview,
Chris Willoughby turned to me and out of nowhere, and
it wasn't in response to anything I asked him, and
he said, he let out a little phrase something like this,
(30:36):
I can still smell her perfume.
Speaker 1 (30:40):
Yeah, you know, talking to Mark, A lot of years
have passed since these polygraphs, and we asked him a
lot of specific questions as we typically do. And you
know Mark always was like, oh, I can't quite recall
or maybe around this time he remembered that comment from
Chris so clearly.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
Yeah, I mean it's such a bizarre comment that it
was an immediate red flag to him, right.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
Because he's got this whole career as an FBI agent,
a criminal profiler.
Speaker 2 (31:11):
He knows. Yeah, it's not just like a flippant comment
that someone would say, right for no reason.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
Yeah, And so you know, it'd been five years at
this point since Echo had disappeared, so to recall her perfume,
and also you know, I wasn't there, and I'm speculating,
I guess, but you're speaking with an FBI agent and
that slips out just an astonishing moment for Mark. But
his training, Marks training has brought him to this place
(31:38):
of being able to appear totally neutral even if he's
majorly flagging something like a very strange comment.
Speaker 2 (31:47):
He can be internally shocked, but he doesn't show that
on his face at all, because he wants whoever he's
talking to to give him as much information as possible,
to be very comfortable and see him almost like a
friend that he can talk to.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Right, someone who's only there to conduct a polygraph and
not there to determine guilt, right, not there to get
the guilt out of someone, but to just get the truth.
So Mark flags this comment super unsettling, and he briefly
contemplates abandoning the polygraph and going into an interrogation to
(32:22):
try to get a confession, to try to get a confession.
But you know, there comes another point in this pretest
where that decision ends up being made for him, And
we're going to play that clip from Mark.
Speaker 3 (32:35):
I'm going to be honest with you, there comes a point,
at least for me. But I know, in speaking to
all these other FBI polygamers and other POLU presammers, where
you have to decide are we even giving a polygraph today?
Because there's nothing to prevent you from just going into
an interrogation. But once you start an interrogation, you're done.
(32:56):
There is no polygraph. In other words, you can't go
after some one and say, hey, listen, I've got reason
to believe you did this thing, and we need to
dig deeper and then come back and say okay, and
now I'm going to give you a fair, unbiased pelt.
You can't do that. So my brain is going, do
I go for it now? Because I think he did it?
Do I go for it now?
Speaker 2 (33:15):
But Mark said that right as he was thinking that,
Chris turned to him and asked if they could go
outside and have a cigarette. Mark doesn't smoke, but he
was like great, So they go outside, and he said
that Chris was chain smoking and pacing around the parking
lot really quickly. Mark was like, you know, worked on
the SWAT team for years, but was like, you know,
rushing to keep up with him. And he's thinking, okay,
(33:38):
maybe this is another sign I should go for an interrogation.
But then Chris finishes his cigarette, goes back inside and says, okay,
I'm ready for my polygraph, And so Mark thought, all right,
well he asked for it, he wants to do the polygraph.
Let's just do it. Let's do it and see how
this goes.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
So Mark proceeds, and here's a clip where Mark talks
a little bit more about the process and specifically with Chris,
who had already sort of given him a few maybe
warning signals.
Speaker 3 (34:10):
You can't ask about a murder, but you can ask
about did when you don't have any remains? Did you
directly cause the disappearance or when you have remains, did
you cause her too either disappeared? Did you cause you
know anything to do with the lake, anything to do
with the car. The more specific the better, based on
(34:31):
how much you know in that way, again, their mind
doesn't have Witherer room. So again exactly what the phraseology
was with him, But the bottom line was it was
a in there in that set of questions is did
you do it? And as I'm watching it come across,
it's not funny, haha. But when you're giving them and
you know you've got to run three or four times,
and the first time you run it, you look up
(34:53):
and your brain goes again, she's my language, Oh shit,
he killed her, And you're saying, okay, and now we're
going to take a break and get ready to run
it again.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
So they run it again and again, and Mark goes
through these very pointed yes or no questions, and eventually
they come to a place where Mark's been watching his
body language, but mostly Mark is watching his charts, and
they come to the end of the polygraph and Mark
(35:25):
SE's indications of deception. Mark makes a decision during the
post test to just level with Chris Willoughby and tell him,
you know, I have to send these back to the
office for an outside person to make the final determination
on the test. But I think that.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
You have failed. And this is the post test, So
anything in the actual polygraph is not admissible in court,
but the pretest and the post test are. And so
here is this next clip mark explaining exactly what happened.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
Next, I let him know we're done with the test.
I take the equipment off, and then we go into
our post test setup. It's time to see if he's
willing to tell you what he's done. So that's where
the conversation begins. And basically, at some point you got
to stop with you know, are you sure you didn't.
Speaker 2 (36:20):
Do you know?
Speaker 3 (36:21):
You know it's a I've reviewed my charts and I
know what I'm looking at. And Chris, I wasn't there,
but you were, and you need to tell me what
happened that day. So I don't remember exactly how Chriss
went with the bottom line is when I told him
(36:41):
that he had failed his polygraph. And again, to be honest,
I don't remember exactly how it happened, but at some
point he just looks up and says, I'm going to
tell you what happened.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Wow, And it's important to remember they're still recording and
just outside the room that army and investigator is watching
this all happen.
Speaker 2 (37:02):
Who has been working on this case before she retired,
then a few years of her retirement back on the case,
and really they had a few persons of interest, but
no DNA evidence, no real leads. And now Mark is
sitting here across from this guy who's saying, I'm going
to tell you what happened.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
And Mark knows that he has details not released to
the press that covered the discovery of echoes remains, and
so he's now going into the mode of Okay, so
he's gonna tell me what happened, and I have details
that only people working on the investigation or someone who
(37:44):
was there and involved would know. To make sure that
it's not a false confession. It's not a false confession.
There's no way to back out of it if you
have that information. So Mark proceeds.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
But what he tells me what happens is this he
knew Echo to be pregnant with his children, with Chris's children,
twins actually, and that he loved her so much that
(38:19):
he had approached her and begged her to run away
with him and not stay with her husband, who was
again oversees at the point of this conversation that took
place years prior, and he tells me, I wouldn't have
any other way of knowing. He tells me that she
tells him that the husband had been home for a
(38:43):
home visit. That wouldn't have made it impossible that the
husband impregnated her. And so Echo tells Chris, this is
all per Chris. This is the only place I got
it from. Echo tells Chris, I'm going with that story.
He's to never know about you. He's to never know
you're the father of the children, because no, I'm not
(39:07):
going to run away with you. I'm going to carry
on with my husband when he comes back, etc.
Speaker 2 (39:15):
So she says, I'm going to have these kids and
say that they're my husbands.
Speaker 3 (39:18):
Yes, And this all takes place either the day prior
or the day that Chris will be is exiting the military.
His time of service is up. Coincidentally, well, I don't
know coincidentally. I'm just saying it comes to a head.
Speaker 2 (39:35):
I see you, okay.
Speaker 3 (39:36):
In other words, Hey, I'm leaving base. I want you
to leave with me. You're going to have our children,
and you're going to let your husband know you're leaving him,
and you're coming with me. And this is what I'm
getting from Chris. Now. The investigator backed up the fact
that they had medical records to show she was pregnant,
(39:56):
that she'd been visiting a doctor, things like that, but
the very specifics of what Chris said, we didn't know
because all you have here skeletal remains, so it's not
like we had a DNA test available to show us
they had to be his children. Chris tell me they're
his children. And apparently what happens is it comes to
a head per Chris, and when he says you're coming
(40:20):
with me, and she says, no, I'm not. He went
into graphic details with me. He said, you know, I
remember putting my hands around her neck and around her
throat and just squeezing.
Speaker 1 (40:37):
You know, I can't imagine being in Mark's position in
that moment and just keeping a straight face and a
calm demeanor. It's the work that you're doing. So in
a sense, you're relieved that you've now got a confession
from someone that lines up with what you know to
be true about the remains, because Chris revealed to Mark
(40:58):
that he seat Belted's body into the back seat when
he pushed her car into the lake. And that was
really the piece that solidified Chris Willoughby's confession as being
truthful to the investigators, because.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
So unusual you would think that if someone drove into
a lake, obviously they'd be in the driver's seat. She
was in the back seat, seat belted in.
Speaker 1 (41:21):
Yeah, certainly, not seat belted in in the back seat.
I mean, the remains were still seat belted in when
they found the car, and so no one outside of
anyone who had been working on the case knew that information.
So in this particular instance, a polygraph led to a
murder confession and Chris Willoughby was arrested. He had federal
(41:44):
charges first and then eventually for the murder of Echo Wiles.
Chris was federally charged with concealing the body of Echo
Maywiles in the car and sinking the car, failing to
report the theft of wiles car to authorities, stealing her car,
obtained control of Echoile's dead body, entering a military installation
(42:04):
for unlawful purpose, and then the state filed their own
charge murder in the second degree, and Chris was sentenced
on July twenty first, twenty eleven. But we actually found
something very surprising to both of us when we looked
into it.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah, Chris was actually released in twenty twenty two. According
to the Kansas Criminal Justice Information System, which we were
able to access online, Chris will be status changed to
in state post release on May twentieth, twenty twenty two,
and then changed again on May twenty fourth, twenty twenty
two to sentence expired. So he is out, and it
(42:44):
feels like not enough time for having killed someone, you know.
I don't know if this goes into the fact that
Echo really didn't have a lot of family and a
lot of people to sort of speak out for her.
One of the things that Mark told us was that
that leading investigator, she was so thrilled that this was
solved for the few people in Echos lives that were wondering,
(43:06):
you know, but Echo didn't come from a lot of means,
and so that investigator actually like raised money to bury
echos remains. And I'm so glad that this case was solved.
It's horrible how she died. You know, it's horrible, even
the way that he described that he loved her so
much and was so possessive and then he killed her,
Like that's not okay, that's really screwed up. Even though
(43:29):
she didn't have a lot of family, her life still mattered.
And I'm glad that they were able to solve the case.
And I don't know why he didn't serve his whole time.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
Yeah, so hard to understand how someone could feel that
level of entitlement to another human being. And it's hard
to comprehend someone out there living their life really only
a little over ten years of serving time.
Speaker 2 (43:54):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (43:55):
So we also asked Mark a lot of other questions
we had about polygraphs, and you know, Hannah, you had
read a book recently about sociopaths. I'm obsessed with sociopaths.
Hannah's obsessed with sociopaths. What did you learn?
Speaker 2 (44:13):
So I asked Mark, how would a sociopath do if
they were given a polygraph test? My thinking was maybe
they could pass it more easily, but he actually said
that in his opinion, you know, he's done a lot
of tests that he found that sociopaths and psychopaths were
easier to test in some ways, even though they maybe
(44:35):
don't get nervous. He said, it's really about memory recall.
He said that if he's asking about a specific incident, about,
you know, robbing a bank for example, well, he said,
sociopaths have great memories, and oftentimes in his experience, when
he would interview someone or give someone a polygraph test
a sociopath, they would maybe have thought about it a lot,
(44:58):
almost like a victory, like revel in that right, And
so the recall is so crystal clear. If he says,
did you rob this bank, He's like, even if it's
just such a quick flash through your mind, you see
the scared teller's eyes, you see them handing you the money.
You know, all of it is so clear, and that
(45:18):
will be reflected in your physiological responses. And he basically
said he could give almost anyone a polygraph test because
it actually calls right back to his initial reader's digest
explanation of polygraphing, which is the mind detecting when the
body is lying. And so if you're a sociopath, with
all of this visual imagery happening in your mind as
(45:39):
you're being asked the question, you're watching that all play
out and your body is telling a different story. Yeah,
still doesn't quite make sense to me, because I don't
think that sociopaths care that they're telling a lie. But
maybe there's still some kind of physiological response.
Speaker 1 (45:57):
Yeah, the question of how a sociopath could ever be
I think Mark referred to sociopaths as the easiest people. Yeah,
he did to give lie detector tests.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's reference.
Speaker 1 (46:06):
His reference is sociopaths. Yeah, because of their recall of
these situations and that being helpful to him. But yeah, surprising.
Speaker 2 (46:16):
I quickly did want to say, you know, just because
we're talking about polygraphs, there have been instances of people
in the past who have successfully tricked a polygraph test,
guilty people who pass them, as well as innocent people
who did not pass them. So we're not here advocating
(46:36):
that polygraphs are perfect or that they should be admissible
in court. I think there's a really good reason why
they're not. But and that's something Mark agreed with when
we were speaking with him. He was like, polygraphs are
not perfect. It makes total sense that these are not admissible. Yeah,
but they can be a useful tool for investigator.
Speaker 1 (46:54):
Well, you know it's a tragic story, but it's amazing
that Mark was able to help bring closure to this
case for Echo's family. And I did reach out to
Chris Wellaby as well since we're mentioning him and did
not hear back.
Speaker 2 (47:10):
I am really glad to have learned about the case
of Echo Wiles, and I feel like I also learned
a lot about the polygraph test this week. If you
have any opinions about polygraph tests or specific stories in
your life that relates to it, or questions about it,
send him in. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks
for listening. We'll be back next week. If you have
(47:33):
a story for us, we would love to hear it.
Our email is The Knife at exactly rightmedia dot com,
or you can follow us on Instagram at the Knife
Podcast or Blue Sky at the Knife Podcast. This has
been an Exactly Right production hosted and produced by me
Hannah Smith.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
And me Pasha Ey. Our producers are Tom Bryfogel and
Alexis Samarosi.
Speaker 2 (47:52):
This episode was mixed by Tom Bryfogel.
Speaker 1 (47:54):
Our associate producer is Christina Chamberlain.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
Our theme music is by Birds in the Airport. Artwork
Vanessa Lilac Executive produced by Karen Kilgareth Georgia Hardstark and
Daniel Kramer.
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