Hello and welcome to September’s deep dive into the truth and lies thrown up by looking at the words people use.
Sometimes I love to throw in smaller, lower-stakes statements to analyze in this newsletter, but this month, we are focusing on the biggest stories in town.
NEVER GONNA STOP
If you’ve been receiving this newsletter for years, you’ll know that “never” is one of my favorite words for detecting deception.
“Never” appears frequently in deceptive statements, particularly deceptive denials. Often, a liar doesn’t think a simple “no” will suffice when attempting to mislead or claim something did not happen, so they default to “never” instead.
Which brings us to Pastor John Paul Miller, the husband of Mica Miller who is the subject of the Netflix documentary Death of the Pastor’s Wife.
He gave a quote for the ages here, using the word “never” and then immediately telling us that he was lying!
It’s the classic “never” indicating possible deception, alongside the doubling down of “in my whole life.” His whole life was already covered by the word “never,” but he’s working so hard to convince us he’s a good boy—another red flag.
Seeing this gave me the impetus to look at where else in that interview he used the word “never.” It’s revealing to see when he chooses to deploy it.
Bearing in mind he has used “never” and admitted it was a lie, I was drawn to this quote where he admits that if he were lying, the word “never” would be involved:
“If I wanted to lie about that, I would just say I never wrote the letter, right?”
Which brings us to the crux of the matter and the questions raised by his depiction in Death of the Pastor’s Wife:
“Q: Have you ever abused your wife?
A: Never. Not once in any way, shape or form. I took better care of her than anybody could ever take care of her.
I never made her- asked her to clean the house. Not once in seven years of marriage. She never had to cook a single meal.
She never had to work. She was never harmed physically in any way.”
Five uses of “never” plus all the extra qualification: “took better care of her than anybody could ever take care of her,” “not once,” and “in any way.”
JP—I don’t believe you.
DEEP DIVE
I joined the Tragedy True Crime Podcast to look at a case that is officially closed, but seemingly still holds a lot of unresolved questions:
MORE TO COME?
The headline read: “Bryan Kohberger lawyer suggests he has new information about Idaho murders.” But what did the lawyer really say?
The quote from the lawyer states he would “simply caution against assuming that everything the public believes it knows about this case tells the complete story.”
He gives the impression that there is something he knows that we don’t. However, he doesn’t actually say that. He doesn’t even say “the public doesn’t know the complete story”; he only cautions against assuming that we do.
Prediction: As this trundles its way through the court system, no significant new evidence will come out about Bryan Kohberger’s actions that night, or anyone else’s. If he had explosive new evidence that provided a new explanation of what happened, he would surely state or hint at it far more overtly.
LEAVING LAS VEGAS
In Las Vegas, Keefe D (Duane Davis to his family) has been convicted for his role in the murder of Tupac. I heard some very telling lines from him during a prison interview:
“Interviewer: Did you have anything to do with the murder of Tupac Shakur?
Keefe: No ma’am, no ma’am. I wasn’t even in Nevada. I wasn’t in Nevada, period.”
Here we get a double denial; it’s vital to him that we hear that. Then he states—twice again—that he wasn’t in Nevada. That’s extra information; he wasn’t asked where he was, so getting this out is important to him. However, notice that Keefe doesn’t say he wasn’t in Nevada at the time of the murder. In his rush to deliver this extra statement, he forgets to make it temporally logical.
If he didn’t commit that murder, did he commit the other one?
“Interviewer: So you had nothing to do with Biggie’s murder?
Keefe: Nothing to do with nobody’s murder”
You’ll likely spot that this is an unreliable denial because it is unspecific. The question was specifically about Biggie, but he expands his answer to cover “nobody.”
Did you also notice the dropped pronoun? He leaves himself entirely out of the reply. It isn’t “I had nothing to do with the murder,” only “nothing to with nobody’s murder.” The question was directly about Keefe and Biggie, yet he managed to remove both people from his response.
BEHIND THE SCENES
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LINDSAY CLANCY AND BLIND ASSUMPTIONS
It wouldn’t be a newsletter about the biggest cases without looking at the Lindsay Clancy case, which has captivated so many of us.
I covered the trial while it was ongoing, so let’s examine some post-trial statements and see what we can learn from them.
First, let’s look at Lindsay’s attorney, Kevin Reddington. Speaking after a mistrial was declared, he said regarding the jury’s position:
“This one individual - it was 11-1 for an acquittal and one individual, who recognized there was reasonable doubt and refused to apply the low”
This statement was seized upon by Lindsay’s supporters, who claimed the jury was on the verge of finding her not guilty of the murders. Others pushed back, noting that “not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility” is also a form of acquittal, and was far more likely in this context.
The counter-response was: “Reddington said acquittal, that means not guilty, period.”
Ultimately, it turned out to be the “lack of criminal responsibility” form of acquittal, so was Kevin Reddington being misleading?
No. This is a classic example of personal definitions. There are many occasions where one person holds a specific definition of a word or phrase while others hold a completely different one.
My statement, “I went for a short run this morning,” can mean something entirely different from your statement, “I went for a short run this morning.”
My “short” might be 5 km; if you run marathons, your “short” might be anything under two hours.
My “run” includes putting on kit and running on the streets. Your “run” could be on a treadmill, a quick jog up the road, or even a drive in the car.
My “this morning,” in the context of exercise, means first thing before breakfast. Yours could be 11:45 AM right before lunch.
It’s the exact same sentence, yet we can mean completely different things. Or we hear something different from what was intended.
Deceptive individuals often use these personal definitions to slip lies past people. If an abuser says, “I didn’t harm this person,” they may be using a personal definition of “harm” that strictly means physical damage. That might technically be true if they only caused psychological damage, but they use the word hoping you will interpret it as a complete denial of any harm. If their truthfulness is later challenged, they can claim, “I didn’t lie. I meant physical harm, and I didn’t do that.”
Returning to the word “acquittal”: Reddington used “acquittal,” which was accurate if his definition included a finding of not guilty by lack of criminal responsibility. That was a reasonable term for him to use. However, it led others to apply a definition he didn’t intend (total innocence) and run with it.
Those who said, “Lindsay Clancy was nearly totally acquitted by the jury,” were not necessarily lying, but their claim lacked proper nuance due to these conflicting personal definitions.
And what about the jurors? The foreperson said:
“I actually started filling out the forms, I was so exited”
I posed the question: Is “excited” a word we would expect from a juror performing the serious task of deciding a murder trial and the future of an accused person?
I received several responses suggesting: “We know what she meant—she was excited to be finished with the trial after weeks in court.” Others wrote: “You’re stupid if you can’t see she’s excited this is about to be over.”
That is not how statement analysis works. We cannot assume what people mean. If they do not say the words, we shouldn’t put words in their mouth, no matter how reasonable an assumption seems.
She did not state why she was excited. It is an assumption to claim we know her mind, it is unfair to project words onto her, and it doesn’t serve us well analytically.
That is precisely how we get deceived: we fill in the blanks and assume meaning when we lack full information. Then, when things go wrong, the speaker can simply say, “I didn’t say that.”
For example, if someone says: “Come invest in this company. I guarantee it’s going to be great, they’ve got a great product.”
If we invest, the company fails, and we lose our money, we might complain: “You told me this was guaranteed to make money!” They can truthfully reply: “I didn’t say that”, because they didn’t.
Which brings me to one last juror and a telling slip of tongue:
“I will never be the same after that 911 call, um, after we learned- like after the trial I saw all the conspiracy theories about how Patrick did it”.
I was asked if this juror was about to admit that the jury learned about the Patrick Clancy theories during deliberations, realized what she was saying, and quickly changed “after we learned” to “after the trial.” (Which would be a major violation for a jury.)
My response remains the same: if someone doesn’t say something outright, we cannot assume it. We cannot declare with certainty that she was going to say “after we learned about the Patrick theories”, that would be guessing based on unspoken words.
We can, however, work directly with what she did say.
She began by saying, “After we learned,” and then thought better of continuing that thought. Whatever was coming next, she caught herself and corrected it to: “after the trial I saw...”
First: who is “we”? In other parts of the interview, she refers to the jury as “we,” so it is reasonable to consider that she could be referring to the jury. So what did they learn? And why did she cut herself off and shift to saying she personally discovered the conspiracy theories after the trial?
Again, remember personal definitions. What does “after the trial” mean to her? Once the mistrial was declared and the jury was discharged? Possibly. Or after all the evidence had been presented and closing arguments were delivered? Also possible.
We shouldn’t put words in her mouth or assume her intent, but we can analyze what she actually said to inform our understanding.
NEED SOMETHING ELSE?
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Jack
Always and never, man, are a tipoff. I'll give a mulligan for phrases like "I have never been to the Moon," but that's about it.
I appreciate your teachings.