Detective Gordon Chase of the Cocoa Police Department (Florida) was assigned a cold case regarding the homicide of a young woman six years prior. During the initial interview, two suspects were cleared when they passed voluntary polygraph examinations. Chase discovered their tape-recorded statements and reexamined them for deceptive answers using software from NITV Federal Services.
Chase analyzed the suspects' recordings using the Computer Voice Stress Analyzer (CVSA). With the software, he ruled out one suspect. The recorded statement of the other suspect indicated deception when she was asked about committing the murder. He was able to locate this woman, and she was given a CVSA examination in person. Again, the charts showed deception. Forty minutes of questioning led to the suspect admitting she committed the murder and providing information on how she disposed of the murder weapon.
The two suspects in this case both initially passed a polygraph examination, but that technology has a high rate of false negatives and can be compromised through various countermeasures. The CVSA technology that Chase utilized, however, has no such flaws.
Voices from the past have stories to tell, but sometimes those stories are only fables. If those voices are recorded on audio or video files—whether analog or digital—we can go back and reexamine them for the truth. The lies told on those tapes may have never been disproven, and a suspect may even have gotten away with murder. If we go back and listen, we might hear a different story. Cold case investigators searching through old evidence often find recorded statements of suspects who were discounted. Due to the time passed, the cold case investigator starts out at a disadvantage, but sometimes these recordings can turn their luck around and solve cases when other detectives have run out of answers.
Republished courtesy of NITVF.