Saturday, August 6, 2011

Stephen McDaniel Statement Analysis

Stephen McDaniel is accused of the  murder of law student Lauren Giddings.  See the article following this analysis. 


Statement Analysis is in bold type.  The reporter did a poor job interviewing, though it may have been a difficult or challenging time to get answers.  Interviewers should not interrupt a subject, nor should an interviewer give the subject words of which to form an answer.  
Stuttering "I" should be understood in context of a non-stutterer only.  

 2 "I's" shows some stress
3 "I's" show anxiety
5 "I''s" are generally only seen in personal homicide
6 or more "I's" usually results in a nervous breakdown and hospitalization.  

This short interview also highlights pronoun change from "I" to "we" back to "I".  

If someone is speaking for others, the "we" is expected so that if the "I" is used it becomes highly important.  Change should always be noted. 
When "we" is used where only "I" is expected, it should be flagged for weakness.
When "I" and "we" are interchanged without contextual justification, the reader/analyst should be on alert for deception and carefully note the context (sentence) in which deception may be present.  

Steven McDaniel Interview - June 30th 

http://www.13wmaz.com/video/1034114633001/0/EXCERPT-Stephen-McDaniel-Interview-on-June-30   Special thanks to the commentator who took the time to transcribe. 

Stephen: Last thing that anyone...there was an email that she sent out after 10 that night where she...she sent to...I think it was someone in Atlanta, a friend of hers in Atlanta and he...she said that she...she was afraid in her apartment that she thought...someone had tried to break in on Thursday night and she...she was afraid to stay in there but.....

Broken sentences:  When a subject stops himself in a broken sentence, he has information he does not wish to state.  Sometimes, the broken sentence is caused by interruption.  Here, we have both:

"last thing that anyone" is interrupted.  
Note the pronouns changing.  
Note what is said, even within broken sentences:

"she was afraid in her apartment".
Note passivity in language, "there was an email".  Passive language seeks to conceal identity or withhold responsibility.  The email should be considered important to the investigation; particularly, who sent it and when.  It is sensitive to McDaniel.   


Reporters, talking at the same time: Reporter 1 - Is that what the email said?
Reporter 2 - (inaudible) ...from Joe?

Stephen: Uh...he...he pulled it up and we... we read it off the screen.

Note that "we" read it; not that "I read it"; this is an indication that the subject may seek to be 'spreading' out the guilt

Reporter: She has an (inaudible, sounds like actual) friend in Atlanta?

Stephen: Yeah...I...I can't remember his name but...


Even with the lack of information, we have the masculine pronoun used and know it is masculine.  2 "I's" shows tension.  He is asked if she had a friend in Atlanta.  He affirms this with "yeah" but then adds what he cannot remember.  


People can only tell us what happened and what they remember; not what did not happen, or what they cannot remember.  This makes the sentence "I can't remember his name" a very important sentence for us and the reader/analyst should be on alert for deception.  Had the reporter said, "What is his name?" then "I don't remember his name" is a response; and not an offer of that in the negative.  This is classified differently.  


When something is offered in the negative, not in response to a question, it is to be considered highly sensitive and the target of follow up questions.  

Reporter: And you hadn't heard on Thursday night? (Inaudible)

Stephen: No, no.


repetition noted. 

Reporter: She never came to you to tell you anything?

Stephen: No...I'm...I...if she had I could have done something...I...I...I could have lent her a handgun...I've...I've got a little handgun that I have for defense and...

Here, the broken sentences show that he is withholding information from the reporter therefore, the context becomes important.


Please note:  "I could have done something" should be examined.  What "could" you have done?  The reader/analyst should be questioning if this is an embedded admission of having done something.  
Also note the repeated "I"  This is important:

If the subject is not a stutterer, it is a strong indicator that he is under, at this moment in the statement, acute anxiety.  
Note he seeks to minimize his gun by calling it "little"    Note that the gun changed:


When he considered loaning it to her, putting it to her possession, it was a "handgun" but while in his own possession, that is, with him, it is now a "little" handgun.  This small difference may be an indication of deception on his part.  He appears to minimize it, by making it smaller, when it is his possession.  This should alert the analyst/reader.   




Reporter: (inaudible) by her or something....

Stephen: Yeah, I'm...something. And I...I... If she was afraid in her apartment, then...I mean, get her out of there.

There is stress associated with her apartment, via the repeated "I's" and the broken sentence.  He has information about the apartment that he is withholding.

Reporter: So someone tried to break in on Thursday?

Stephen: That's what she said in the email, she thought that someone had tried to break into her apartment, she said like...."Macon hoodlums tried to break in my apartment on Thursday night".

Please note the change:  "someone" is singular, and now it is "hoodlums" which is plural.  This is an indication that McDaniel is being deceptive. 
Note that "tried" in the past tense, indicates failure. 

Reporter: Is that her car parked there, the Chevy?

Stephen: No, no...um...uh...I think that's the detective's car, Detective Patterson.

Reporter: So her car's not even there?

Stephen: No, it...it was here earlier and they... they towed it...I...It...It had been there for days and then they towed it to... I guess, look through, see if there w..

The reader/analyst should note that the pronoun "it" indicates the car, and that "it" is repeated; twice, indicating sensitivity and strain.  What is it about the car that is concerning to McDaniel?.

Reporter: (interrupts him): (inaudible) the police.

Stephen: Yeah.

Reporter: How did you find out that something was wrong with the police here....was it like when you woke up a little while ago...or...?

This question is framed in a way that suggests an answer; therefore, should be avoided.  The subject does not take the answer, however.

Stephen: No...I'm...we...the police were called last night and they came and they looked around and they didn't see anything. I mean,...they went in...we looked around the place and no sign of a struggle, no sign that anyone had broken in...just nothing....just she was gone. I mean, all of her stuff was there, her I.D. was there, her wallet was there...but she was...she...she was just gone.

Note that "the police were called" and:  
they came
they looked around
they didn't see anything, and then "they" becomes "we".  The short sentences show stress, but the "we" is to portray himself as helping, or working with the police.  

The change of pronouns is a concern.  
"She was..." is cut off, which is also concerning.  The overall interview is frustrating because the reporter interrupts him and does not ask open-ended questions. 
Note that he emphasizes that "nothing" was found.  


Reporter: And this was last night that they...you let in and you...you looked around with the police?

Stephen: Yeah...I'm.... (interrupted by reporter again)

Reporter: And so, when did they find the email? You said Joe....?

Note that the reporter not only interrupts, but gives him answers

Stephen: Yeah, Joe...I...I'm...It...it...sometime after midnight...I...I don't know exactly when.

Reporter: After midnight, that was last night.

Stephen: Yeah.

Reporter: And can you clarify who Joe is again?

Stephen: Joe Carens, he's...he's another law student. He's a friend of Lauren's as well.

Reporter: And when were you guys going around lookin' for her?

Stephen: I mean I...I...I didn't know that she was even missing until last night...I mean we...I mean we...we checked in the law school, we couldn't find anything. And we...uh...uh...me and a couple of others we like walked around to see if ma...maybe she'd been snatched or something...I mean...see if maybe that she'd dropped something or...or put up a fight li....something.

The change of pronouns suggests deception.
Note "we couldn't find" is offered in the negative; 
The stuttering shows anxiety during deception. 
The original question was "when" (though it was not well worded).  We can assume that timing is sensitive to the subject.


He introduces two topics:


1.  Someone dropped something
2.  She put up a fight


These are two unusual things to offer up since they were not posed by the reporter. This offered information is likely something police will verify in their investigation.   He attempted to portray himself as "we" with the police, and here he was looking for something she dropped or looking for something to show she put up a struggle.  Follow up questions for clarification were called for at this moment. 


The reader should be asking him or herself if the subject did it, and if so, did he drop something along the way that he feared police would find?


an interesting question:  when he was walking around to see if she had been snatched, what was he looking for?  What would 'being snatched' look like to someone walking around?  Then, he changed his mind to see if, maybe, he dropped something.  This should alert police that he likely dropped something that is evidence against him.   


Reporter: (inaudible) was there and everything? Did you guys look through it?

Stephen: Yeah, her...her cellphone was by her bed and Joe, he plugged it in, charged it up and they checked through and the last call was on Saturday at sometime.

(end of excerpt)  


Accused murderer's mom says her son didn't do it

By AMY LEIGH WOMACK and JOE KOVAC JR. - The Telegraph
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Glenda McDaniel says her son, Stephen, admits buying the hacksaw that authorities found traces of slain-and-dismembered Mercer University law graduate Lauren Giddings’ DNA on.
But, she says, he has told her that he threw away the saw months ago, that Giddings’ “real killer” must have plucked the saw from the trash and used it to frame him for a crime that she says detectives have -- in questioning her son -- threatened to seek the death penalty.
Stephen Mark McDaniel, 25, was charged with murder Tuesday night in connection with Giddings’ slaying and dismemberment in late June. He had been held at the Bibb County jail on unrelated burglary charges since June 30, the day Giddings’ torso was found wrapped in plastic in a roll-away trash can at the Georgia Avenue apartment complex where they were next-door neighbors and recent graduates of Mercer University’s Law School.
While interviewing Stephen early on, around the time the burglary charges were levied, his mother says detectives “threatened him, that they were going to charge him with capital murder, that they were going to charge him with malice murder, and they were going to execute him.”

according to the charges, the threat was real. 
“This was before he had been booked on anything,” the 56-year-old mother said in a telephone interview from her home in Lilburn on Friday.
She said that around midnight June 30, more than 14 hours after Giddings’ remains were discovered, investigators called her and put Stephen on the phone.
“And Stephen, in almost a hypnotized, very flat voice said, ‘They told me I did something bad. They told me I hurt someone.’ 
Note that we do not call an embedded admission or confession if the subject enters into the language of another:  here is may be quoting the police. 
For 20 hours they had been trying to pressure and threaten and coerce him into confessing for a murder,” Glenda McDaniel said. “And they had nothing to come to this conclusion, other than that he did the horrible, horrible thing of injecting, inserting himself in the search for his missing friend.”
McDaniel, who had granted interviews to reporters the afternoon of June 30 as police combed the apartment complex across from the Mercer law school where he and Giddings graduated in May, was declared by police the next day as a person of interest in Giddings’ death.
Late last month McDaniel’s family showed up to move his belongings out of his apartment. His lease was up. He had stayed in town after graduation, as had Giddings, to study for the bar exam.
Glenda McDaniel said police, armed with search warrants, had taken some of her son’s clothing and towels by the time she and Stephen’s father drove down to move his things.
“Probably the FBI was looking for fibers is my guess,” she said.
Investigators also took McDaniel’s collection of knives, swords and his three guns, she said.
“He had a small handgun that he used for protection. He had one other handgun and he had a larger gun. He had permits for all of them. They had never been fired,” Glenda McDaniel said.
She said her son collected the knives and swords “because he’s into knights and King Arthur … and he also likes samurai movies.”
Other items taken by police included Stephen’s video games, video-game system and his computer, Glenda McDaniel said.
“They took his sofa, threw it across the room on top of a chair. They took every plastic bag that he had from the grocery store and pulled all of them out and threw all over the place. They turned his bookcase over and threw his books and his papers all around on the floor in piles. I mean, they trashed the place,” she said.
Authorities also found hacksaw packaging for a saw made by Stanley Tools in his apartment, according to Stephen McDaniel’s arrest warrant. But his mother says it wasn’t uncommon for her son to keep packaging for items.
She said he bought the saw to cut and remove a fallen Bradford pear-tree limb at the Georgia Avenue complex after April thunderstorms spawned tornadoes as they swept through Macon.
“The hacksaw was flimsy, and it bent and twisted and did no good at all, and he threw it in the garbage,” Glenda McDaniel said.
She says it wasn’t until after her son recovered from the shock of his arrest and was “able to focus and process things” that he recalled hearing a noise and seeing someone standing on Giddings’ balcony one night.
It was the Thursday night before the June 25 Saturday that Giddings went missing, Glenda McDaniel said, the night she says Giddings supposedly noted in an e-mail that someone had tried to break into her apartment.
Glenda McDaniel said Stephen told her that “he had heard a loud noise, got up, got dressed, went out and saw the maintenance person standing on Lauren’s balcony” at midnight. Glenda McDaniel says Stephen claims the maintenance man told him he was thinking about cutting the grass.
“There is no grass on the property anywhere near (Lauren’s) apartment. It’s all near the back of the property,” Glenda McDaniel said. “He had no reason to be on her balcony. But Stephen, having been woken up out of the sleep and … not being a suspicious person, he responded, ‘Well, it won’t bother me because I would sleep through anything.’”
McDaniel’s mother said she’s sure he kicked himself after he realized the maintenance man could have been up to no good.
“It was only later, when he started recovering from the shock that his friend was dead, that he started processing that and realized, ‘No. No one cuts the grass at midnight,’ ” she said.
“And at that point, (Stephen, in jail) contacted his lawyer and said, ‘I need to talk to you,’” Glenda McDaniel said.
She thinks that it was “by divine appointment” that her son went outside and noticed the maintenance man.
“God loved Lauren and he wanted justice for Lauren, and he wanted somebody to be there who would know something and be able to bring justice for her and whoever did this to her,” she said.
Glenda McDaniel reasoned that the maintenance man would know that her son was smart enough to “connect the dots” and that the worker planted a master key and a key to Giddings’ apartment inside Stephen’s apartment. She contends the worker could also have plucked from the garbage the hacksaw McDaniel had bought in the spring at a nearby Walmart.
David T. Dorer, the complex’s former maintenance man, walked out of the Macon police detective bureau just before 3 p.m. Friday as reporters gathered for a police announcement about an unrelated murder investigation.
Police had asked Dorer, a Mercer law student, to drop by their headquarters to answer questions, and he was being “completely cooperative,” said Brett Steger, Dorer’s attorney.
Dorer is not a suspect or a person of interest in Giddings’ slaying. The questioning was brief, Steger said.
Asked about Dorer’s questioning, Macon police spokeswoman Jami Gaudet said police won’t speak about who they are or aren’t scrutinizing in the Giddings’ investigation.
Gaudet said complete results of the FBI’s analysis of evidence in the Giddings case have not been received by police.


Read more: http://www.macon.com/2011/08/06/1656682/accused-murderes-mom-says-her.html#ixzz1UHL7hiIP

  
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