48 Hours - Discerning the Truth: Interrogations and False Confessions | My Life of Crime

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Melissa Calusinski has been in prison for over 10 years after she says she falsely confessed to killing an 18-month-old baby at a daycare center. Marty Tankleff spent 17 years in prison after falsely “confessing” to murdering his parents.Why would someone admit to something they didn’t do? Host Erin Moriarty interviews Dr. Saul Kassin, distinguished professor of psychology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and author of, “Duped: Why Innocent People Confess – and Why We Believe Their Confessions” on the machinations behind false confessions.Featuring the 48 Hours investigations, “The Fight for Melissa” and “Marty Tankleff’s Fight for the Truth”.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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ConstantContact.ca It's Erin Moriarty, and we have a special episode for you today from my original podcast, My Life of Crime. I'm taking you inside true crime investigations like no one else, taking on killers and those accused of crimes. Here's an all new episode of My Life of Crime that takes you deeper into the psychology behind the fight for Melissa and Marty Tankless' fight for the truth. I'm not going to tell her. I had nothing to do with it. I don't think that you intended on hurting him. I never put my hands on their hands. That's Melissa Kowalski inside a police interrogation room. The year was 2009. Melissa was a 22-year-old daycare worker accused of hurting an 18-month-old baby. Plain and simple. All you need to do is tell us the truth and we're done.

The interrogation went on for nine hours. She told police over and over again she didn't hurt the baby, but they didn't believe her. Looks like you intentionally killed this boy. I didn't do anything! I am telling you guys the truth! Just give me a break. This kid's dead. We're not going anywhere until we get the facts here. But finally, Melissa gave in and told detectives what they believed she had done,

that she had become frustrated with the baby and killed him. And you get mad at him and you throw him on the floor. You throw him on the floor? Yeah. It's really hard. Really hard? Yeah. Two years after that interrogation, Melissa Kowalski was convicted of that baby's murder.

And today, 11 years later, she is still in a woman's prison outside of Peoria, Illinois. But here's the part of the case that's so troubling. Since that conviction, the medical evidence used against her at trial has been called into question and discredited. The medical examiner who did the autopsy has admitted he made a mistake, and yet Melissa Kalyczynski remains in prison and could spend the rest of her life in prison. Why? Because of what happened inside that small interview room. I'm Erin Moriarty, and this is my life of crime. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee

when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military and when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon Music. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals.

However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marcia Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informant's Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery

app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify, and listen to more Exhibit C true crime shows early and ad-free right now. Melissa Koyuzinski is now 36 years old. She remains in prison mainly because of that 2009 police interrogation. Her confession was a powerful piece of evidence. No one just admits to a murder, do they? Melissa had to have done something. Why else would she say what she did? Whatever one thinks about Melissa's innocence or guilt, the videotapes of her interrogation demonstrate many of the themes

associated with coerced confessions. To explain further is Dr. Saul Kasson. He's a distinguished professor of psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan. And he has written a book about coerced confessions. Duped. Why innocent people confess and why we believe their confessions. So, Dr. Casson, I love the name of this book because the first question I had is, why duped? Who is being duped here? Well, that is an outstanding first question because there are two subtitles to the book.

The first person being duped is the suspect who was led to believe that it's in their better interest to confess than to continue denial. The second people being duped are you and me and the judge and the jury and the courts, because false confessions are not just admissions of guilt. They are statements that reek of credibility. And, you know, there are two myths here. The first myth is, I'd never confess to a crime I didn't commit. My answer to that is, you might. The second myth is, I'd know a false confession if I saw one. No, you wouldn't.

Well, so this, the reason why I wanted to start with Melissa's confession is because you've seen it. I've seen it. It went on for, at first she's denying it, but the whole thing goes on for nine hours. And it is very credible. I have to tell you it is because she didn't just say I did it. She shows the police that she did it. So, I mean, I struggled when I saw it and I worked with

a producer who still sometimes wonders, She had to have done something. So explain to me what was going on in Melissa. If she didn't kill this baby, what is going on through her mind? You know, it's interesting because almost simultaneous to the moment in which she confesses and agrees to give a demonstration with a reenactment with a doll, she's asking questions about when she's going to get home. She has no idea that she's about to cooperate and give a confession and that she'll never see home again.

Her expectation is what interrogators try to get your expectation to be, that it is in your better interest to confess than to continue denial. But so is what's going on, does she actually start to think she did do it? Or is she just thinking, the only way I'm going to get out of this room is I'm just going to say I did it, I will show them what they want, and then I'll fix it when I get out? I cannot crawl into her head and answer that question, but I can tell you that it happens both ways in general. The vast majority of false confessions happen because a person who is innocent knows they're innocent, but they've been there so long, they've tried denial. Denial doesn't work their way out. They're exhausted, they're fatigued, they want to check in with

their parents or whatever the needs may be. And they're led to believe that maybe what you did is not a big deal, which is to say, I understand you were in a stressful circumstance and people behave that way in stressful circumstances. And it wasn't really your fault. For a variety of reasons, an innocent person then might say, okay, I did it. But they know they didn't do it. And in fact, when you read interrogation manuals, they will tell you the goal, the overarching goal

is to increase the anxiety associated with denial and decrease the anxiety associated with confession. Oh my God. So that raises a question I have. Are there certain people who are more likely to falsely confess or more likely to be coerced? Because I have to be honest, I do not think anyone could get me to confess the sign I didn't do. I mean, would you agree that there are some people like me who could never be forced to confess a sign I didn't do. I don't know if there's anybody who's invulnerable. I think everybody has a breaking point. But I agree with you. Some people are vulnerable and some people are not. It doesn't mean that it can't happen to anyone.

And I say that because imagine you're at a workplace and imagine that money is stolen and they have a loss prevention department and the loss prevention department is empowered to try and recover the loss from theft or shoplifting or whatnot. And they identify an employee who they think might've had the opportunity and maybe the time schedule to have stolen whatever it was. And they bring that employee in and they indicate to that employee, well, look, we can call the police in on this. We can do it that way. Or you can sign a confession and pay back the money.

And we can keep it in-house. In cases like that, there have been known instances where the employee, fully innocent, never stole the money, decided it was in their better interest and it would be easier in life to sign the confession, pay back the money, than allow this to go to the police. Doesn't that person know that they will probably get fired? Depending on how that interrogation was presented, maybe not. I worked on a case just like that. And the individual was led to believe that, sign the confession. You can indicate that you're sorry for having taken the money.

And then you can sign a promissory note in which you agree to have us retrieve that money from future paychecks. But what does future paychecks mean? You're going to be working there, of course. Certainly suggests that they didn't promise it, they said, but it certainly implied. That was one of the more interesting parts of your book because, you know, I work in this area. I deal with cases that involve coerced confessions, but never thought about coerced confessions in the workplace. And you're saying that's not unusual. Yeah. You know, I wish I had an answer about how often

that happens. I don't. I took a case once because it was fascinating to me. And I got an inside look at the loss prevention business. And I saw that, in fact, the interrogators in that situation are trained in very much the same techniques as homicide investigators. Of course, you don't have your Miranda rights. And in this one case that I worked on, the interrogator boasted of having a 98% confession rate. Well, that's not something to brag about. It means you're getting some false confessions in there. Unless you are a perfect human lie detector and you know that everybody you're bringing in is the criminal,

that's not, the 98% is not good news. In that case, the individual who did the interrogation said he was free to leave. He was free to leave whenever he wanted. Oh, hang on a second. You pulled him aside in the middle of a workday. You're his supervisor. He's free to leave. He was free to leave whenever he wanted. Oh, hang on a second. You pulled him aside in the middle of a workday. You're his supervisor. He's free to get up and leave the workplace and keep his job? I don't think so. So it's an inherently coercive situation. It's a situation in which the person being interrogated is being interrogated by somebody who is superior within the hierarchy. And I will note will note too and again I can't say this as an empirical matter I wish I could I have no sense as to what the prevalence rate of this problem

is I know that on this case I worked on several years ago it was a case involving a worker for AutoZone in San Diego. I know that when his case settled, which is to say the jury awarded him $7 million or so, my phone rang off the hook from others who say the same thing happened to them. Now, I understand how somebody would sign something thinking, okay, if I keep my job, I'll sign this and pay it back and move on. But when it is, we'll say, a Melissa Kaliusinski who's sitting in a police interrogation room. And so you described three different types of people who confess. Every time I do a story, like you even mentioned the Charles Lindbergh case

where his child was murdered and you said people out of the blue confessed. So there are just professional confessors? I'm not sure I'd go that far, but there is this phenomenon known as the voluntary false confession. In high-profile cases, you see it sometimes, like the Charles Lindbergh's infant son was kidnapped, and 200 people volunteered confessions.

So these individuals just want attention? It looks like. I can't interpret, again, what they were doing. There are a lot of reasons for people to volunteer false confessions. One is they have this need for attention. Another might be, and the most common that we know of in cases like this, are cases in which they're protecting somebody else. It might be a parent protecting a child or a child protecting a parent. So there are various reasons. And a voluntary false confession honestly doesn't tend to present a problem for this criminal justice system, in part because when somebody volunteers a confession to a crime, they're not even a suspect,

police inherently are suspicious and they look for proof. Well, proof of guilty knowledge. What do you know about the crime that enables you to give me this confession? So what are the real ones? Where are the problems? The real ones are the compliant false confessions. Those are the cases where the people who are innocent and know they're innocent buckle. They buckle because it's too stressful to keep going and because promises are made or implied, threats are made or implied,

and they've come to believe it's in their better interest to confess. threats are made or implied and they've come to believe it's in their better interest to confess you did didn't you do tests in a lab that you can you briefly describe how you could get people to confess to something that they didn't do in a lab environment yeah you know it's for ethics reasons it's hard to imagine how you might do this um and so the first time we did this, it was at Williams College in 1996. And I had a student by the name of Lee Keechel. And we did the first ever published study on false confessions. What we did is we brought people into the lab,

said two students at a time, we're gonna have one of you read a set of letters and the other is gonna type them. We're interested in people's typing ability, speed, reaction time. That was our cover story. And then by a luck of the draw, coin flip, the experimenter said to one subject, you will be the typer and to the other, you will be the reader. And then we'll flip roles later. And the experimenter then turns to the typer and says, oh, by the way, whatever you do, don't hit the Alt key. We have a quirk in the program

and the computer will crash, we'll lose everything on the hard drive. So whatever you do, stay away from the Alt key. They start the process and one student is reading, the other student is typing. The reader is not another subject. The reader is working for us. And about midway through, a couple of minutes into the process, the experimenter explodes,

says, oh my God, what just happened? Grabs the keyboard from the subject, starts manipulating the keyboard and says, did you hit the alt key? And the subject says, no, I didn't touch it. They're mindful. And he turns again, does some manipulation, says again, did you hit the alt key? Are you sure? Everybody says, no, never touched it. In half of the cases, that's it. And he makes one more effort to get them to say

that they touched it. In the other half of the case is he turns to that confederate who was reading and said, did you see anything? Now, either she says, no, I didn't, or she says, yes, I saw him hit the alt key. At which point the blood drains from the subject's face. Sometimes they come right out and apologize. Many of of them three times more sign a confession after being presented with that false evidence than if they weren't presented with the false evidence and when all is said and done many of them actually came to believe that they hit the which we knew they didn't hit so what's going on there they had no choice but to believe this confederate who presented false evidence.

And the other thing that's going on is they're now stressed and they want out. The third type of false confession, which is, are people where they're vulnerable or they're rendered vulnerable? There was a case in New York that I found just jarring. And I can tell this story quickly because it was a guy by the name of Malte Thompson from Denmark. And this says a lot, I think, about cultural differences. 22 years old, comes from a family of teachers, educators, came to work at a preschool near the United Nations. And at some point, another assistant at that school made an allegation to the staff that he was sexually abusing some of the children.

Well, the person who made the allegations had apparently made several of those before, was a troublemaker, was not credible. They did the responsible thing and put him under some surveillance, asked questions of children, of staff. It was an unlikely scenario because it was a huge setting with a lot of people around at all times. In any event, they absolved him and they fired her. Professor Kasson told me that he believed the school officials had done the responsible thing.

When there was no evidence that Thompson, the young teaching assistant, had abused any children, they fired the accuser, who had made other unfounded accusations. But it didn't end there because of what the accuser did next. She then went to NYPD. They then went to his house and picked him up at 6 in the morning and brought him in for questioning. After five, six hours of questioning, they let him know that they have him on surveillance camera

making these, you know, forcing the kids to touch him or touching him. Which is a lie. Which is a lie. Which is a lie. But he doesn't know that police in this country are allowed to lie. He's from Denmark. They're not allowed to lie there. They're not allowed to lie in most places. And so he had no choice but to believe, I must have done this. They get him to sign a confession and then they take him, put him on camera in front of the assistant district attorney to take a statement. And his opening of this so-called confession was, it has come to my attention that I've done a bad thing.

He didn't know if he did or he didn't, but if they had him on surveillance footage, he must have. And he simply wasn't aware. That's a form of an internalized false confession. They led him to believe he had done this thing. I mean, and he actually thought he did at that point? I don't know what he thought, but he was now confused enough to infer. Now, it's interesting when you read these internalized false confessions where they come to believe it, they use a different language. They're not using the language of memory. They're not saying, oh yeah, I remember I did this, that, and the other thing. They're saying, it looks like I did it. I guess I did it. And then that language transitions

into, okay, the conversation goes to, well, let's imagine how it is you did this. Think about it. Think hard. And they close their eyes sometimes and they imagine. And they come up with a confession filled with the facts that were given to them through the process of interrogation. From the cops. From the cops. So it kind of matches the actual known crime.

All charges against Malte Thompson were eventually dropped. We'll take a quick break right now and then look at another case that Professor Kassem worked on. It's the case of Marty Tancliff, who says he was pressured by police into believing he had killed his parents. As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. But did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was.

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He called 911. I just remember the woman screaming, yelling, listen to me, saying calm down, calm down. I'm sending you an ambulance. She gave me some instructions. I want you to take a clean towel, wrap wherever he's gushing blood from. And did you do? I did that. Shortly afterwards, investigators arrived and almost immediately zeroed in on Marty as the main suspect. After all, he was the only one left alive. Lead investigator, Detective James McCready. He was sitting as calm as calm can be with his hands clasped just like this. What would you have expected him to be doing? I think he would have been crying. I think he would have been shaken been very upset but marty oblivious to mccready's suspicions thought he

was helping the cops what impression did you get from the way he was talking to you that he was trying to help me and he wanted my help as the conversation developed i could see that uh look he was just he's that he was lying. And how did you know that? It's not so much the way what is said, it's the way in which it's said. Marty did finally confess, or what Detective McCready called a confession. This is how Marty once described to me what happened. It was the constant barrage, Marty, we know you did it, everything will be okay, just tell us you did marty we know you did it everything will be okay just tell us

you did it we know you did it and it was the on and on and on questioning over and over the critical point in the interrogation came when mccready left the room to take a fake phone call from marty's father who was actually in a coma at the time. Your father, they pumped him full of adrenaline, and he came out of his coma, and he said that you did it, Marty. You lied to him. Yes, I lied to him, yes. Yeah, and that's all right to do? The United States Supreme Court says it is.

And what are you thinking? That this can't be happening, that this is not real. Marty Tankliff told police over and over again that he had nothing to do with the attack on his parents. But as you just heard, Suffolk County, New York detective James McCready lied to him. And eventually it made the 17-year-old, who had never dealt with police before, question his own memory. Professor Kasson describes how it happened. in his own memory. Professor Kasson describes how it happened.

At that point, Marty caves. That phone call, that staged phone call, that was preceded by other lies. At one point, the detective came in and said, Marty, your mother fought with her assailant and there was hair in her grasp. And we did the analysis. That hair is yours. And that just confused the hell out of

him because Marty didn't approach his mother. He saw that she had died and he was now looking for his father. The detective then, because they had a problem, these are two very bloody crime scenes in the house and Marty was clean. So they had to believe that he had showered before calling 911. Marty, it looks like you used the shower this morning. He kept saying, I did not shower. I called as soon as I discovered my parents. And the detective said, well, we did a humidity test on your shower and it shows it was used this morning. Again, another lie. Lie number two. And then the detective McCready leaves the room, leaves Marty sitting in the room with his partner, returns and says, Marty, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is we spoke to the hospital and your father has regained consciousness. He's out of his coma. The bad news is he said you did it. Marty says, my father is the person I trust most. If he says I did it, I must have done it. And again, there's this language of inference, not, oh yeah, now I remember. It's, I must have done it. It's an inference he's making because his father doesn't lie. So you have a kid, he's 17. He's in a state of God knows what shock. He's lied to not once, not twice, but three times. And the third lie cites the person he trusts the most in life. He caved. Momentarily he caved. I don't know for

how long, but I do know that he started to get confused and started to wonder whether or not he did it. This case and the case that we had talked about earlier, Melissa Kaliuzinski, these quote-unquote confessions were obtained very early in the investigation. And in both cases, there was a lot of evidence. In Melissa's case, the medical evidence was wrong. In Marty's case,

there was a lot of evidence pointing to Marty's dad's partner. But what then happens when that new evidence comes out? You would think common sense would say when the new evidence, they'd say, okay, maybe we need to look another direction. But once you have that confession, that doesn't happen, does it? That is the million-dollar question that for years vexed me. When a confession made early in a case is contradicted by the rest of the evidence, it means that that confession could be false. But Professor Kasson says few investigators are willing to admit that the confession should be thrown out.

And I've seen a number of wrongful convictions where the erroneous evidence was an eyewitness identification mistake. You don't see this in those cases. If new evidence, say DNA, comes forward and demonstrates the innocence of the person who was identified by a witness, everybody shrugs their shoulders and says, oh, well, you know, witnesses make mistakes. People are imperfect. Sorry. But when the evidence that precedes, say, DNA is a confession, innocent people don't just confess. What did you do? And now the police, the prosecutors are on the defense. Police for taking the confession, prosecutors for being part of the confession taking process. Maybe they come in late and do a videotape taking of the statement, not vetting the statement.

Whatever it is, everybody gets remarkably defensive. And it's just a different feel. And so you look at these cases and you find cases, for example, where let's take the Central Park Five case as a good example. Most people think they've been DNA exonerated. No, that's not what happened. In April of 1989, the jogger was raped in a brutal way and these kids were dragged in for interviewing and interrogation.

And they did, in fact, confess. Didn't all five confess? Four of them gave statements on camera. The fifth allegedly did confess, according to the detectives. And so there were their confessions. What people don't realize is now that's April of 1989. They're not tried till later that year and into the next year. In the summer of 1989, you know, she was raped.

And there was semen samples taken from vaginal swab, from clothing, from her socks. There was semen everywhere. The results came back that summer from the crime lab. All of the samples traced to a single person, not to more than one. And all of that, one person conclusively excluded all of them. I had no idea. Most people don't. Most people don't realize that they were convicted in 1989 and 1990 because of their confessions, even though the jury knew, both juries, two cases, two trials, the juries knew that the DNA excluded them. That's how powerful confession evidence is. So what you're saying

right now is, and now I want to move to really just kind of summing up of how do you end false confessions so it sounds like number one right now police are allowed to lie yes that should change that's got to stop that's got to stop most americans don't know that police are allowed to lie and moreover they're not just allowed to lie to adults they're allowed a lot of kids and we're raised to trust police i mean we are so i mean like marty's saying my dad would never lie that's what most people think a cop to allow the lie to kids. And we're raised to trust police. I mean, we are. Yes. I mean, like Marty's saying, my dad would never lie. That's what most people think.

A cop would never lie to me, especially about evidence. There are false confession cases I can point to and describe involving 12-year-old, 13-year-old, 14-year-olds who are lied to about the evidence and almost have no choice but to believe the lie. almost have no choice but to

believe the lie. And then, of course, the other solution, which I think is changing, is the idea of recording all interrogations. Recording is necessary for two things. Judges are supposed to determine if a confession is voluntary. So is the jury supposed to take that into account. Is it voluntary or is this coercive? Well, how do they know that if they don't watch the process? Second, when a final confession is taken filled with details that only a perpetrator could have known, I put that in quotes, only a perpetrator could have known, how is the jury going to know where those facts came from? Did the suspect really originate those facts? Did the suspect really know that or did they come through the process?

So I guess then the last best way to prevent coerced confessions is just not talking to police. You actually even mentioned this, that sometimes innocent people think, oh, I'll talk because I have nothing to hide. You should not talk. because I have nothing to hide. You should not talk. The realization that I had is not just that a lot of people don't comprehend their rights, understand their rights. The law has made it more difficult to invoke your right. But when you ask innocent people, I always ask two questions. So why did you confess? And why didn't you get a lawyer? And the lawyer part of that question always gets me the same answer. I didn't need a lawyer. I didn't do anything wrong. Innocent people don't use their Miranda rights. Part of it is they worry about the optics of silence. It doesn't look good.

But part of it is they truly believe in a world in which their innocence will become transparent, that there's a certain degree of justice. And if we just talk, they'll see I didn't do this. Big mistake. You don't talk. Yes. Whether you get a lawyer or not, you do not talk to the police. You need to, by the way, according to the courts now, you need to talk in order to invoke your rights. All right. So at least say, I need a lawyer. Yes. And you have to say it clearly and emphatically. You can't say, for example, I think I need a lawyer. You need

to say, I need a lawyer. I want a lawyer. There are a lot of cases in this book. I can't do full justice to Professor Kasson's book in one podcast. It's filled with fascinating cases of innocent people who confessed the things they didn't do and the reason to read the book is the reason why Professor Saul Kasson wrote it, which is if you do serve as a juror and you have this information, you might be able to save an innocent person from a wrongful conviction. conviction. I'm Erin Moriarty, and this is my life of crime. This podcast series is developed by 48 Hours in partnership with CBS News Radio. Judy Tigard is 48 Hours executive producer. Steve Dorsey is CBS News Radio executive producer. Production and editing for this third season of My Life of Crime by Alan Pang. Craig Swagler is vice president and general manager of CBS News Radio.

And finally, a thank you to all of you, our listeners. We owe it all to you. The millions of 48 Hours fans. Don't forget to join me online. I'm at EF Moriarty on Twitter, and we're at 48 Hours on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Talk to you soon. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a quick survey at wondery.com slash survey. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn,

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