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262 Deception at Work

Anxiety inducing questions – Phase C

INTRODUCTION

The objective of this phase is to increase the suspect’s anxiety to the point where he loses
confidence in his ability to succeed, thus bringing him to face reality at the pivotal point.

The suspect’s anxiety will increase and the chatter from the two monkeys will become
unbearable every time he has to:

• admit that he has not told the truth;
• admit he has done something wrong;
• falsify an answer (rather than to conceal);
• acknowledge that he tried to mislead you through a subjective truth or some other decep-

tion;
• change his story to fit new facts presented to him;
• make a denial.

It will also be increased every time he is confronted with evidence indicating his guilt, or
discrepancies in his explanations. You should remember that anxiety becomes intolerable,
usually not because of one knockout blow but through an accumulation of small points.

You should concentrate on the mechanics, or the ‘how’ of the case, and on minor wrongdo-
ings; emphasize the evidence you believe you can get and adopt a professional, relentless and
critical parent role. This phase has to raise the temperature but you can easily stay in control:

• remain totally committed in what you say and how you say it;
• don’t panic in the face of counter-attacks but move on quickly to the next question.

If the interview goes off track, revert to a ‘safe haven’ and continue as seamlessly as possible.

TOPIC COVERAGE

In most interviews there will be a number of topics of interest, each with its own key points.
For example, you may have intelligence (and thus a deception theory) to suggest that the suspect took
bribes, falsified his travel expenses, downloaded pornography from the Internet and so on. Each one
can be regarded as a separate topic and you should summarize the key points for each one. You may
decide to deal with each topic in a self-contained portion of the interview, or you may de-
liberately decide to jump rapidly from one topic to another to make it more difficult for the
suspect to plan ahead (Table 7.31).

Table 7.31 Most likely reactions to changes in topic

Reactions indicating innocence Reactions indicating guilt

Will usually accept the change of topics The deceitful suspect will find topic changes
without objection difficult to handle and may object to them

Answers will be spontaneous His delivery of responses is likely to be slow and
cautious