CRIME SCENE STAGING

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to crime Watch Daily Podcast, a daily podcast on
the latest serious crimes around the US.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Now here's your host, Doctor Carlos.

Speaker 3 (00:21):
Forensic Psychology is a podcast that provides an illuminating window
into the workings of the criminal mind.

Speaker 4 (00:30):
Now here's your host, Doctor Carlos.

Speaker 2 (00:54):
Her host, Doctor Carlos. Today we're going to be talking
about crime scene staging.

Speaker 5 (00:59):
That's right, you.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Ever heard of it?

Speaker 3 (01:01):
We're gonna learn a lot about it today with two
experts who work for the.

Speaker 6 (01:05):
Second Look Training and Forensic Consulting company.

Speaker 2 (01:08):
They actually founded it. It's a veteran owned.

Speaker 6 (01:10):
And operate a business developed to provide quality investigative training
for detectives, crime scene investigators, and prosecutors. All their instructors
are experienced detective or crime scene analysts. Most are published,
All have been recognized as the court as expert witnesses
and their respective fields, telling you this is a professional outfit.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Arthur the co owner, Arthur Steve Chancellor will be here
with Grant Graham, the other co owner. We're gonna be
talking about crime scene staging. Well, we're going to talk
about the Jesse small A case a little bit.

Speaker 6 (01:43):
We're gonna talk about different types of crime scenes and
why they're staged.

Speaker 2 (01:47):
So let's get cracking.

Speaker 4 (02:00):
Big five Adam A young night five. Okay, my three
boy camping grant WI. I believe my camera one.

Speaker 7 (02:12):
Welcome gentlemen, Thank you much, thank you.

Speaker 3 (02:16):
So let's get started on this. I know both of
you have extensive experience and investigations, but what does Second
Look do.

Speaker 8 (02:25):
So Second Look we kind of formed this for a
couple of different things. First of all, to start providing
some police investigative training. We were approaching this at a
little bit different aspect because we're going to focus on
the detectives and the actual practitioners as well as the prosecutors. Uh,

(02:46):
and that's pretty much are the group that we wanted
to target. But we also wanted to also get into consulting,
which we which we've done in the past, that we're
looking for cases, particularly if they're unsolved or the air
cold cases, or if they want some some assistance in
some of the forensic aspect of the of the investigation.

Speaker 3 (03:07):
That's a great point. A lot of people don't realize
prosecutors do a lot of investigative themselves.

Speaker 8 (03:13):
That's right, and you know that's part of our target audience.
When we when we send out our flyers, we always
send something out to the prosecutors and to h to
invite them also because that way both the detectives and
the prosecutors and the crime scene folks all get together
and figure out how they can use this type of
evidence in later prosecutions.

Speaker 3 (03:34):
Excellent, you know there's something I don't know. We're gonna
get the crime scene staging in a minute. But it
doesn't matter. The areas that you guys help and consulting.
In other words, an urban police department homicide compared to
a rural homicide, those good big differences you guys focus
on as well.

Speaker 7 (03:49):
Geographical ones.

Speaker 8 (03:52):
Yeah, really, We've done one right now from a from
a major police department up north outside of Justin. We're
doing one now in North Carolina in a smaller town.
We've also consulted in Arizona. We're working on one right
now out of Indiana, one out of Louisiana, and Grant's

(04:16):
going to be doing a bloodstained pattern interpretation report out
of Tennessee.

Speaker 4 (04:22):
Woh wow.

Speaker 7 (04:23):
We're also looking at a case out of the UK
as well.

Speaker 3 (04:26):
Right, is that different too for you the UK?

Speaker 7 (04:30):
Or is everything?

Speaker 3 (04:31):
Is there a universal principles and then slightly differences like
maybe organizational systems and stuff like that.

Speaker 8 (04:36):
Yeah, you know, it's a good description. It's universally it's
about the same, but they obviously do things a little
bit different than than we do here in the States.
We're reviewing the report. It's actually very well done. We
just think that not that they've missed something, that they've
kind of misinterpreted some of the stuff. I think we're
going to be able to help them out because I

(04:58):
think both cases that we're looking at is these these
are both stage cron seats.

Speaker 3 (05:04):
Do you find yourself working with a lot of agencies
that may not be very familiar with homicides because they
have a very low count of homicides the city we
live in, I think we had one in the last
eight years, and we've got four last year. But you know,
the police department here tends to have a lot of
lateral recruits from other departments that do have a lot
of homicides, So maybe that helps them out. But I

(05:25):
don't know if there's anything like that at all.

Speaker 7 (05:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 9 (05:28):
Yeah, we find that a lot of the smaller departments,
you know, they don't have the experience in investigating these
kinds of cases, and so I guess they would find
it helpful. Our input helps them with organizing the case
and kind of giving them a new approach towards evaluating

(05:48):
the evidence, as well as interviews and basically kind of
kind of the whole investigation they're approaching.

Speaker 3 (05:55):
Seem interesting and interesting. I know a lot of people
don't realize the things, but it fifty some of the
police departments have less than fifty officers or something like that.
So I mean there's a lot of small departments.

Speaker 8 (06:05):
Right, a lot of small departments and unfortunately a lot
of turnover.

Speaker 5 (06:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (06:10):
I love that's true.

Speaker 3 (06:12):
And maybe we can get Grant later to talk a
little bit about blood splatter as well. I mean, there's
a bonus addition to this interview. People are always fascinated.
Maybe you could dispell any myths if there are in
regards to things like CSI or criminal minds.

Speaker 7 (06:27):
Grant on the spot here.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
So, guys, so tell us a little bit about crime
scene staging. I mean, is this something that you do
in Hollywood or is this something actually happens.

Speaker 8 (06:37):
Yeah, you know, one or one of the opening things
we discuss in our classes is that you know, crime
scene staging is not anything new. As a matter of fact,
we actually look at the Bible and that the first
crime scene staging was actually in Joseph in Genesis. If
you remember, Joseph's brother sold them into slavery, brought back

(07:00):
his jacket, put animal blood on it, and ripped it
up and told his father that, yeah, your son, Joseph
was killed by a wild animal. Well, if you take
a look, that's they really staged the crime scene. They
really provided evidence to their father to misdirect his either
investigation or is his thought process of what happened. One

(07:21):
of the misnomers that we also correct is that, you know,
crime scene staging is is kind of a misnomer because
folks think about crime scene staging as being a location.
It's not necessarily a location. With Joseph, it was the
it was the evidence of the jacket. But if you
look at stage sexual assaults, really what we see is

(07:45):
is that the actual crime scene that has been altered,
maybe the victim herself who has self inflicted injuries. So
it's it's really not necessarily a specific location as much
as is just the whole whole dynamics of the event.

Speaker 9 (08:01):
And also as as well we see a lot of
what we call verbal staging mixed in with with the staging,
either be it the victim themselves staging themselves as the
stage crime scene.

Speaker 5 (08:12):
But then of course they have to supply some information
as well that is fictitious, uh and erroneous as part
of justifying what they're trying to explain.

Speaker 7 (08:24):
So we see that this aspect of verbal staging is
also mixed in with all these types of cases.

Speaker 3 (08:31):
Wow, that really expands the scoop. I know that shooting
scene that put people have put some bullets there or
took them away or something that you guys really expanded that.
Are you gonna say, I'm sorry seeing Yeah.

Speaker 8 (08:41):
I was gonna say. And the other thing is is
that that when you look at most of the of
the modern literature on staging, it's it's almost always centered
on a homicide. But in reality, we find stage scenes,
I mean across the board. We find it in property crimes,
ourson sex crimes. Matter of fact, something that's in the
news right now is the Jesse smilette. That's a stage

(09:05):
crime scenees the stage hate crime. Because if you take
a look, he came up with this evidence and he
then gave a false statements and he tried to misdirect
the police investigation that he was a victim of a
of a hate crime. When we heard that, we kind
of we kind of tuffled to ourselves and said, yeah,
we're not buying that. Could we recognize what we call

(09:28):
some of the red flags that kind of stood out
to us that said, yeah, we if we were the cops,
we'd be looking at this pretty hard.

Speaker 3 (09:37):
That's interesting. I think a lot of people initially really
didn't believe it. It was really surprising. You had a
lot of people who just let that doesn't make any
sense to me.

Speaker 7 (09:45):
How did that happen?

Speaker 3 (09:47):
And now we're seeing a lot of videos coming out
and things are unraveling pretty quickly from mister small lap, what.

Speaker 7 (09:57):
Do you how would you grade that?

Speaker 3 (09:58):
If you had a grade it from an A to
an F regards to staging on his.

Speaker 8 (10:01):
Part, Well, certainly wasn't very successful. Certainly, I mean, uh,
maybe a for effort, but a D in the execution.

Speaker 3 (10:14):
Let me ask you this, how what what kind of
percentage of crime scenes are actually staged as a large percent?

Speaker 8 (10:21):
Well, you know that's that's part of the difficulty. And
we include this in our in our lectures also that
there's really hasn't been any any real good studies to
kind of differentiate, and there's really no statistical basis for this.
There has been some research a number of years ago
by a slush elder who looked at a number of

(10:42):
homicides that he had received from the FBI, and what
he determined I think it was nine hundred forty six.
I think nine and forty six. They just his determination
was about eight percent, about eight percent of those nine
hundred cases that he looked at were staged. But if

(11:05):
you extrapolate that to some of these other crimes, if
you look at homicides, if we had fifteen thousand homicides,
then eight percent is going to be what about twelve
hundred I think we figured out. So, I mean, we're
talking about twelve hundred homicides a year even if we
just accept eight percent.

Speaker 3 (11:21):
Wow, And I'm assuming, I guess there's different reasons for
people to stage them, either to prove their innocence, make
it look like it was self defense, or it wasn't
even them in different motivations as well.

Speaker 8 (11:32):
Right, Yeah, you know, usually it's seeds are staged primarily
because they know the person or the offended. That stage
is the scene is primarily going to be the one
that the police are going to be looking at. So
the whole thought process is to misdirect the police investigation

(11:53):
by pointing it in another direction.

Speaker 1 (11:55):
It's more or less kind of a self preservation when
you get down to the root of it. They want
to misdirect their investigation away from them and onto something
or someone else, and it's more of a basic self
preservation kind of thing.

Speaker 3 (12:13):
That's an interesting point because I'm thinking, and I got
the smaller thing in my head. But if you if
somebody's got the stage homicide scene, for instance, is it
better not trying to give tips to the crime scene?

Speaker 8 (12:25):
But is it harder for you?

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Let's do it this way, I say, harder for you
to determine if they're trying to redirect the focus to
another person blaming them for the homicide, or just saying
I have no idea who did this, I really don't
know what happened here, blaming Jack and Jack's looking at
this point what or I didn't do anything, Yeah, but
you're high the whole entire time, so you don't even remember,
Or they blame the question mark I.

Speaker 9 (12:46):
Guess right, And that's that's kind of two of the
different things that do happen. You know, Sometimes the staging is,
you know, I don't know who did this.

Speaker 7 (12:57):
I wasn't here. You know, I was at home.

Speaker 9 (13:01):
My wife wasn't feeling well, so I went out to
get something to eat, right, so she didn't have to cook.

Speaker 7 (13:06):
I go to McDonald's pick up some burgers.

Speaker 9 (13:08):
I come back forty five minutes later, and oh my gosh,
I find her dead.

Speaker 7 (13:12):
I don't know who was there.

Speaker 9 (13:13):
I wasn't there, So it's an I don't know kind
of an excuse versus other times they may stage the
scene to make it look like.

Speaker 7 (13:19):
A particular person did it or a group of people
did it.

Speaker 9 (13:22):
So it's it kind of depends upon what their theme
or what their idea of staging the scene is.

Speaker 8 (13:30):
The other thing is is what we look at is,
you know, we've kind of looked at the concept of
staging and we determined that there's really there's really two
different subgroups of what we call primary staging. And primary
staging is basically you're trying to misdirect the police investigation
away from what really happened. Hey, we say that there's

(13:52):
the ad hoc, which means this is this is a
staging that after another offense has taken place, now they
suddenly have two stages the scene to make it look
like something else happened. Or it's the premeditated, where you
are premeditating going to murder this person and you're going
to set the stage to make it appear at something else.

(14:13):
Of course, the main difference is is is that when
you when you have an ad hoc scene that takes
place after an after a death has already occurred, you're
pretty much stuck with whatever you have available at at
that scene itself. So you're kind of limited and your
story tends to be limited. Uh So, when we come
in and we teach to look for certain red flags

(14:34):
in this event, the ad hoc ones are relatively easier
to unravel because they don't have a chance to prepare.
The storyline generally isn't there, and they don't have the
forensic evidence or the physical evidence that that we would
expect to find. The difference with the premeditated of course

(14:57):
that those can be kind of who've done it. Use
this is a person that is taking the time to
probably research to to get all of his evidence together.
He knows what he's going to do and he's able
to do it at a time when he's ready, so
that those, uh, the evidence tends to be a little
bit more intense, the the storyline is a little bit

(15:22):
more rehearsed, and those take a little bit more to
what's going around. They have the chance to do dry runs,
you know, test out there, uh the way they want
to do it, and change things as they go along,
and so the kind of things that that you can
look at, you know, look for signs of a person
doing dry dry run, you know, look at where their

(15:43):
cell phones have been in uh in the past, and
you know, checking things like that out. So there's a
little bit more things to look at as well, because
there's a could be a longer period of time in
planning write this thing because it's premeditated versus something that's
ad hoc that is not preposed.

Speaker 3 (16:01):
You know, that's a great points that reminds you, guess,
justin is gonna be one of the hot topics today.
But again we saw a small let They showed the
videos of the two perpetrators going to the scene to
rehearse the supposedly rehearse it with the Chicago Police farmer
has said, and they were preparing for it, so premeditator. Yeah,
I can see that interesting.

Speaker 8 (16:19):
And if you take this, take the same case. They
were going to the store that you were picking up
all the items, that's all part of the premeditation.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Fascinating stuff. Let me ask you this. You kind of
led me a couple of questions I popped up in
my head. The first thing it popped up was hitman
and then second thing was cartels. These individuals obviously might
be sophisticated enough to try to stage. I mean, some
cartels don't even care about staging because nobody's gonna do anything.

(16:50):
But normally they might hit man, mafia's gangs, they might
try to stage, maybe set up their rivals, just try
to clear their own innocense. But we'll start off with
the hit mans. I think it's more of a distinct one.
If you have a professional, for instance, that maybe works
for our cartel, works for a certain unsavory agency, what

(17:11):
would you how would they make does make it more complicated?
Are there are different things you have to look at?

Speaker 7 (17:16):
What's going on here?

Speaker 8 (17:18):
Well, I think what we would be looking at in
that particular case, first of all, when you have a
hit man who's going to assault somebody he doesn't even know,
you know, we teach that strangers don't stage sprime sceats
because there's no need for them to misdirect the scene
because they don't know who they are in the first place.

(17:39):
But what we do find in cases like that, we
find what we call secondary staging. Secondary stage is simply
means that it's a it's a second type of staging.
And we see this so many times in hit man
in the mafia. You're murdered, then your hands are cut
off or your tongue is cut out, and you're left
where everyone will find you. Well, that's it's kind of symbolic, right.

(18:02):
It's the same thing with some of our serial killers
that will will murder a victim and then undress them
and then stage them out in public where they can
be found. That's just another type of staging. But it's
not to misdirect the police. It's simply to make a statement, right,
make a statement or to fulfill some sort of fantasy,
right that they have.

Speaker 9 (18:22):
So in with these folks that are the serial killers,
a lot of times the secondary staging aspects that we
see are those things that fulfill the offender's fantasy. Right,
it's not meant to misdirect the police investigation at all,
sour Our categories on staging crime scenes are based upon
offender intent and motive.

Speaker 5 (18:42):
Right.

Speaker 9 (18:42):
In primary staging, the intent is to misdirect the police investigation.
In secondary staging, the intent or the motive has to
do with fulfilling some sort of fantasy, right, or sending
some sort of messal assuming some kind of message.

Speaker 3 (18:56):
You know, awesome stuff, really incredible stuff, folks, right that
you can find again, as I mentioned earlier, their website,
really interesting stuff. I have to tell you a second
look training dot com. You can see they have scheduled
courses and bookings. They have also publications you can look
at too, gentlemen. And we're getting to wrap up in
a few minutes. A fascinating topic for people to learn about,

(19:18):
especially law enforcement. If if you're in law enforcement now,
or whether it's federal or state. This is a great
organization of contact or military actually as well. Can you
give us a little insight about bloodstain patents.

Speaker 9 (19:32):
All with bloodstained pattern analysis. It's an analysis of the
various shape, the morphology of the stains and based upon
your training and knowledge of how blood behaves, of how
liquids behave in their subjective force or other types of events.

(19:54):
Crime team, you can make a determination as to what
types of events or forces created them stains. And it's
quite often possible to definitely determine what did not happen.
And when you can determine what did not happen, then
you're pretty much left with the possibilities of what did happen.

(20:15):
So sometimes that same pattern analysis can tell us specific things,
but sometimes we're left with, well, maybe there might be
two or more scenarios that are consistent with these patterns
versus just leaving it with you know, one type of
event that can happen.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
I guess you could also determine the area of the body.

Speaker 9 (20:35):
Yeah, and so you know, some stains can if you
reconstruct an impact pattern, then that impact pattern reconstruction can
tell you where the impact occurred that created those stains
within a three dimensional space to a point, but to
a small area that you can tell with that, but

(20:57):
that area is other stained patterns I can tell you,
I g. If there's something called a pattern called a
hair swipe where you have blood and hair and then
that hair contacts, let's say a wall or something. If
you see a that kind of a pattern, and then
you know in particular the area of the of the
victim that had the hair on it with the blood

(21:19):
was at that specific location.

Speaker 7 (21:20):
At some time during the sequence of events.

Speaker 9 (21:23):
So depending upon the kind of stain, it can give
you specific information or it.

Speaker 7 (21:28):
Can give you more of a one or two.

Speaker 9 (21:31):
Or three different types of scenarios that are persistem Yeah,
we teach a forty hour course.

Speaker 3 (21:36):
Forty hour course. Wow, I don't think they've ever solved
this case. I don't know if you guys have any
insight on the Zodiac Killer.

Speaker 7 (21:42):
Did they ever do anything with that?

Speaker 8 (21:45):
Well? Still, that's that's still unsolved.

Speaker 3 (21:48):
Have you guys ever tried to look at it and
say just for fun or not even bothered?

Speaker 9 (21:52):
You know?

Speaker 8 (21:53):
What the difficulty is is just trying to get all
the get all the case documents and stuff like that.
I mean, we've we've looked some of the more famous cases.
We do a study on the jeffhen McDonald case. We
use that as part of our training. But I mean
we have a lot of those documents. I don't have
hardly anything on the on the zodiac have.

Speaker 9 (22:13):
The danger you're got into when you look at these
kind of cases is is if you don't get a
hold of all the information right and then you can
make a determination that it might not be correct because
you are not everything in the investigation. So you want
to always get as much information as you can so
that you can make a fully informed termination rather than

(22:33):
a partially informed one.

Speaker 3 (22:35):
That's a great point. Let me ask you those cold cases,
how many I don't know if you guys know this,
but what's the percentage of those getting solved?

Speaker 8 (22:45):
It kind of it kind of varies from a department
to department. One of the more successful departments I have
a good friend of mine who who does a lot
of work in the in the cold case arena, and
one of the more successful of police departments actually is
the city of Charlotte, UH in North Carolina. But it
all depends on really and truly and having worked that

(23:08):
for a number of years, it just depends on the
amount of attention you're going to give it when you're
working a When you're working a cold case, it's it's
actually harder than a fresh case. And a lot of
the police departments think, is this something that you can
just pick up and kind of run and work from
time to time and it just doesn't work.

Speaker 5 (23:28):
Out like that.

Speaker 8 (23:29):
They're they're very they're very time intensive.

Speaker 7 (23:35):
I'm imagine.

Speaker 3 (23:35):
So I think, what is it the forty eight hours show?
It kind of picking up forty eight hours? That is
that pretty accurate?

Speaker 8 (23:42):
Yeah, we we say seventy two, but but yeah, if
you're gonna solve it, it's it's gonna be within that
for us, we say seventy two hours, but yeah, your
chances of solving it start to go down after that
time as much resources as you can in that time.

Speaker 3 (24:01):
One of the big things we like to do in
our show, too is to educate the public, like we
are right now and one of the spelling myths. There's
one thing too I have to point out, and I
hope maybe you can corroborate this for me, is that
a lot of times we see the tragedy homicide, somebody
doesn't know who killed who, Uh they're doing the investigation.
I think, like Nipsey Russell for a LAPD a couple

(24:22):
of months ago, if somebody gets killed, everybody immediately cries
that we got to find out who did We got
to find out who did Let's say it's a it's
a well known figure, and maybe we don't find out
for a week and a half. But that's we don't
find out for a week and a half. You guys
might have already found out. But you need to make
sure all the evidence is there, nothing is going to

(24:43):
taint it, Is that correct?

Speaker 8 (24:45):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely, I will tell you many many times,
within hours of of the of arriving at the scene
or being reported, we have a really good idea who's involved.
But of course now you have go the evidence and
do all your interviews before you come back and say, boom,
we're ready to arrest this guy. And it becomes frustrating

(25:08):
because yeah, the public is uh, you know, clamoring, you know,
for that kind of information, and you know, it's it's
very difficult not to say we know, we just you know,
just give us a chance.

Speaker 3 (25:21):
It's a very different world now, and now we have
a lot of backseat detectives constantly monitoring everybody and tiny
determined who did what and if you don't do anything right,
all of a sudden, they have twenty years of experience
at age twenty homicide works. It's kind of odd. Yeah,
it's very unique world we live in. Well, gentlemen, we
thank you so much for being here. We truly appreciate it.

Speaker 7 (25:45):
I thank you for having us.

Speaker 8 (25:46):
Thank you very much for the opportunity which you're appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (25:48):
You know what, I'm remiss, but I forgot to say
thank you very much, both of you for your service
as well. Thank you, and folks, you never know, but
maybe the Chicago p DO will contact them to help
them out a small lift, but I think it could
be a close case. Anyway, look at second Look training
dot com right down on here, folks, make sure you
check them out, and make sure you also follow us

(26:11):
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safe everyone.

Speaker 4 (26:23):
That's true.

Speaker 3 (26:24):
That again, thank you everyone for following. Stay safe everyone,