The abduction of a Utah girl, Elizabeth Smart from her house by a gunman has been headline news for almost a week.
http://deseretnews.com/dn/view/0,1249,405010970,00.html?
In that story, they quote the brother of Edward Smart - the father of Elizabeth:
Four hours?! That’s grueling. Does that suggest the FBI detected some non-truth-telling or even complicity?
Not necessarily. They may have had an answer that gave them reason to believe he wasn’t telling the truth (an inconclusive result). How he reacted to that news could have skewed the test from that point on.
They could have used techniques that would involve good cop/bad cop behavior just to push his buttons and see what they could find out. It makes a big difference if you are being polygraphed by someone that you feel isn’t adding any stress to the situation. If they are telling him that he’s lying on a particular question, they will dig as long as his lawyer will allow him to sit there and take it.
They may also wanted to get a number of different reads on the same questions. If there was one that they were zeroing in on, they would go back to that question as many times as they wanted.
Of course, he could have flunked the thing, and they were asking probing questions to see how much he knows.
[Slight hijack.]
Since I was away, can someone tell me what is so special about this little girl that makes her dissapearance national news while most others are ignored? Do these folks have money? Are they famous?
[end hijack]
Not a hijack at all. The girl was pretty, blonde and popular. The family is wealthy. They live in the rich area of SLC (and UT only has Park City on the other side of the mountains).
She was taken by a gunman in a brazen early-morning abduction.
There’s drama. There’s wealth, a tightly-knit community of LDS folk… and Ashleigh Banfield has been on location last night and tonight (Now my interest is revealed).
And the FBI, after six days, do a four-hour polygraph test on the father who tellls his brother it was ‘four hours of hell’.
Perhaps some line of questioning piqued the FBI’s interest?
Four hours is not at all unusual for a polygraph exam. The last time I had a suspect tested took three hours, and this was just basically to ask “Did you steal the wallet?”.
So that’s what Kirk meant in Star Trek IV when he said Spock took too much LDS.:smack:
Now this is a hijack… (and I got to use the new smilie :D)