A Tremor in the Blood: Uses and Abuses of the Lie Detector

A little [knowledge] is a dangerous thing.

-- ALEXANDER POPE

During the year prior to the infamous murders of Nicole Simpson and Ron Goldman in Los Angeles, my colleague Bill Iacono and I, together with then-Director of the Department of Defense's Polygraph Institute ( DoDPI) Dr. William Yancey, traveled to that city to meet with certain members of the L.A. Police Department. These included the head of the LAPD's polygraph unit, the chief crime scene photographer, and several experienced detectives of the homicide and major crime units. The purpose of our trip was to explore the possibilities of conducting an exploratory study of the forensic applications of the guilty knowledge technique in cooperation with the LAPD. One or more local psychologists, trained by us, would carry a "beeper" by which he could be summoned by one of the participating detectives to any fresh crime scene that seemed promising- that is to say a crime scene that gave the appearance of posing what the police call a "Who done it?" problem. Our psychologist, with -- we hoped- the increasingly enthusiastic cooperation of the detectives and criminalists, would seek and record facts and pictures of the scene that had promise as the basis for GKT items. The criminalist-photographer we talked to was at once interested and pointed out that present-day methods of digital photography make it possible to easily rearrange the elements in

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