Crime is never unpredictable.
Before a lie is spoken, a pocket is picked, or an assault is inflicted, each and every criminal gives off silent cues. They can be as subtle as a shrug of the shoulder, a pointed finger, or an averted gaze. But together, they make up a nonverbal language that speaks loud and clear—if you're trained to see it.
CRIME SIGNALS is the first book to offer a comprehensive guide to the body language of criminals. Filled with amazing real-life stories of crime and survival, it's designed to help you stay alert to the warning signs of a wide array of offenses. From the tell-tale signals of a swindler to the warning signs that experts use to help thwart terrorism and violent crime, this book breaks down a criminal's body language into clear recognizable symbols.
What is the look of a lie? How do child predators unknowingly give themselves away? What were the clues that exposed white-collar offenders like Martha Stewart and Andrew Fastow? Answering these questions and more, Dr. David Givens, a renowned anthropologist and one of the nation's foremost experts in nonverbal communication, offers a fascinating, instructive, and essential tool for warding off crime and protecting the safety or yourself and your family.
Crime is never unpredictable.
Before a lie is spoken, a pocket is picked, or an assault is inflicted, each and every criminal gives off silent cues. They can be as subtle as a shrug of the shoulder, a pointed finger, or an averted gaze. But together, they make up a nonverbal language that speaks loud and clear—if you're trained to see it.
CRIME SIGNALS is the first book to offer a comprehensive guide to the body language of criminals. Filled with amazing real-life stories of crime and survival, it's designed to help you stay alert to the warning signs of a wide array of offenses. From the tell-tale signals of a swindler to the warning signs that experts use to help thwart terrorism and violent crime, this book breaks down a criminal's body language into clear recognizable symbols.
What is the look of a lie? How do child predators unknowingly give themselves away? What were the clues that exposed white-collar offenders like Martha Stewart and Andrew Fastow? Answering these questions and more, Dr. David Givens, a renowned anthropologist and one of the nation's foremost experts in nonverbal communication, offers a fascinating, instructive, and essential tool for warding off crime and protecting the safety or yourself and your family.
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Overview
Crime is never unpredictable.
Before a lie is spoken, a pocket is picked, or an assault is inflicted, each and every criminal gives off silent cues. They can be as subtle as a shrug of the shoulder, a pointed finger, or an averted gaze. But together, they make up a nonverbal language that speaks loud and clear—if you're trained to see it.
CRIME SIGNALS is the first book to offer a comprehensive guide to the body language of criminals. Filled with amazing real-life stories of crime and survival, it's designed to help you stay alert to the warning signs of a wide array of offenses. From the tell-tale signals of a swindler to the warning signs that experts use to help thwart terrorism and violent crime, this book breaks down a criminal's body language into clear recognizable symbols.
What is the look of a lie? How do child predators unknowingly give themselves away? What were the clues that exposed white-collar offenders like Martha Stewart and Andrew Fastow? Answering these questions and more, Dr. David Givens, a renowned anthropologist and one of the nation's foremost experts in nonverbal communication, offers a fascinating, instructive, and essential tool for warding off crime and protecting the safety or yourself and your family.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466857780 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | St. Martin's Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 11/19/2013 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 240 |
| File size: | 317 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Crime Signals
How to Spot a Criminal Before You Become a Victim
By David Givens
St. Martin's Press
Copyright © 2008 David GivensAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-5778-0
CHAPTER 1
THE LOOK OF A LIE
I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.
— WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON
CONTEXT IS EVERYTHING in body language. A pointed index finger can mean one thing in an art museum, and something else entirely at a congressional hearing. Aimed at a Renoir in the Louvre, a pointed forefinger can refer to the painting as if to say, "Look." Aimed at a congressional panel, the same stiffened finger can say, "I'm lying."
The pointed index finger of deceit was seen by millions who watched Baltimore Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmeiro testify before a U.S. congressional hearing on March 17, 2005. In his opening statement, Palmeiro aggressively stabbed his index finger at members of the panel and said, "I have never used steroids. Period. I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never" (Dodd and Bodley 2005).
Refusing to testify until subpoenaed, Palmeiro later claimed his finger point was spontaneous. "I was just speaking from the heart, man," he explained. Nearly six months later, on August 1, 2005, after testing positive for the drug stanozolol, Palmeiro received a ten-day suspension for violating baseball's steroid policy. U.S. representative John Sweeney of New York accused Palmeiro of "audacious lying."
By pointing his finger, Rafael Palmeiro gave what many saw as an overly dramatic response to the accusation of steroid abuse. To quote the famous line from Shakespeare's Hamlet, "Me thinks he protest too much."
BODIES DO NOT LIE
Lawbreakers lie to cover up their offenses. Since they must lie to survive, offenders are generally skilled at deception and often sound convincing. But while the tongue tells a lie, the body cannot. As you listen to words, look to the body — especially to hands, shoulders, lips, and eyes — for truth.
A lie is a statement deliberately meant to give a wrong impression or to deceive. The English word "lie" comes from the seven-thousand-year-old Indo-European root leugh–, "to tell a lie." Fundamentally about secrecy and concealing, deceit is an ancient human practice with deep roots in animal psychology.
Deceit is truly widespread in the animal kingdom. Nonpoisonous flies and snakes adopt warning marks and coloration of poisonous species to seem more harmful than they are. The ability to deceive is highly evolved in primates. Our closest primate relative, the chimpanzee, is an especially gifted deceiver.
Zoologist Frans de Waal observed a young male, Dandy, who deliberately withheld cues of excitement to deceive other chimps about the location of hidden grapefruit. Dandy later consumed all the grapefruit by himself. Primatologist Jane Goodall watched as Figan, a nine-year-old male, deliberately withheld food calls to conceal a bunch of ripe bananas. Figan later consumed all the bananas by himself.
Like chimpanzees, people withhold information for their own profit or gain. When asked about their unscrupulous actions, people, unlike chimps, become verbally deceptive. Many undermine their vocal lies, however, with the same excessively emotional, overwrought hand gesture given by Rafael Palmeiro. In the context of a verbal lie, the index finger point is singularly revealing and should prompt you to question whether the speaker's words are true.
Seven years before Palmeiro made his public point, you may have witnessed the most infamous finger-pointing display ever seen on national or international TV. On January 26, 1998, President William Jefferson Clinton pointed aggressively at the American people and said, "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky." Seven months later, sitting in the Map Room of the White House on August 17, Clinton made a televised statement to the American people: "Indeed, I did have a relationship with Miss Lewinsky that was not appropriate." On January 14, 1999, Clinton faced impeachment over the affair on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice.
"He doth protest too much" goes for Clinton as well as for Palmeiro. Both men's index fingers fervently extended to show indignation — self-righteous anger — at those who accused them of wrongdoing. Nonverbally, however, there was less truth in their statements than raw anger. The truth was not in the words but in the act of pointing.
Pointing a stiffened index finger at another person is a widespread human sign of aggression — not of truth. The pointing gesture is assisted by an extra forearm muscle, extensor indicis, which evolved explicitly to assist the index finger's point. Incited by palpably negative emotions, pointing at another is almost universally deemed to be an unfriendly, rude, and even hostile act. It's no wonder, then, that while casting spells, tribal sorcerers aim their evil energies by pointing at victims with wands or extended forefingers.
INDIGNANT LYING: THE CASE OF THE MISSING DIGIT
Criminals often cover up their lies with aggressive displays of anger. Lips snarl, brows lower, eyes glare, and voices snap as they mouth words that are mostly untrue. Not only do anger signs deflect attention away from lies, they also warn listeners away from questioning the liar. Like growling dogs, angry liars threaten to bite.
On March 22, 2005, thirty-nine-year-old Anna Ayala found a one-and-a- half-inch-long dismembered human finger in her bowl of chili at a San Jose, California, Wendy's. The well-manicured fingertip entered Ayala's mouth when she took a bite. It was "kind of hard, crunchy," she said. Anna reported the incident to Wendy's staff, and in the process unleashed a nationwide scandal that cost Wendy's millions of dollars in business as customers avoided its fast-food stores.
"There's no words to describe what I felt. It's sick, it's disgusting," Ayala said. Shortly after the incident, she filed a claim accusing Wendy's of negligent food handling. But under intense scrutiny as investigators closed in, she later withdrew the claim and sought seclusion in her Las Vegas home. Meanwhile, Wendy's and police continued to pursue the case. Authorities searched a fingerprint database to learn who the finger belonged to, but were unsuccessful, and testing was done to learn if the digit was raw or cooked.
Investigators found no fault with Wendy's or its suppliers, and suspicion turned to Ayala herself. In an interview at her home with CBS news reporter Joe Vasquez on April 8, 2005, Ayala answered the reporter's questions with repeated displays of verbal and nonverbal anger.
"Anna, did you plant the finger?" Vasquez had asked.
"She paused," Vasquez reported in his story. "And she shot me an 'if looks could kill' stare. 'Where would I get a damn finger, for God sakes!?'"
Anna Ayala's angry answer neither intimidated nor deflected Joe Vasquez.
"Anna, for the record, you did not put any finger in any chili?"
"'No!' she snapped back with a bite in her voice. 'That is the stupidest thing that they can say. Now, I'm very angry'" (Vasquez 2005).
As with Bill Clinton and Rafael Palmeiro, there was less truth in Anna Ayala's statements than emotional anger. On January 18, 2006, Ayala was sentenced to nine years in prison for conspiracy to file a false insurance claim and attempted grand theft from Wendy's. Her husband, Jaime Plascencia, forty-four, who'd bought the severed finger from a coworker in the first place, was sentenced to twelve years and four months.
NONVERBAL LOCKDOWN: THE SCOTT PETERSON CASE
Like Clinton and Palmeiro, some people point while lying, but not all pointers lie. In fact, for a minority of offenders, deception shows in the complete absence of gestures. Nonverbal lockdown — no body language at all — can reveal as much about the absence of an emotion as indignant pointing can reveal about its presence. Since sociopathic lawbreakers don't experience normal feelings of guilt or remorse, they show fewer nonverbal signs of emotion when they lie. In short, they protest too little.
No pointed finger was given by Scott Peterson, for example. On November 12, 2004, in Redwood City, California, Peterson was convicted for the first-degree murder of his wife, Laci, and the second-degree murder of their unborn son, Conner. In court, Scott showed no bodily signs of indignation — or any other feeling, for that matter — save the muted, intellectual emotion psychologists call "interest." Indeed, as jurors voiced their final decisions, one by one, to convict him, Peterson gazed at each with a completely expressionless face. Reportedly, none of the jurors met his eyes.
To lie by omission is to withhold relevant information by remaining silent. As a sign of deception, a composed demeanor and deadpan face can be as telling as Clinton's and Palmeiro's pointing digits. Again, showing no indignation whatsoever suggests the absence of emotion, much as demonstrative hand gestures can reveal its presence. After his murder trial, jurors commented that Peterson had seemed apathetic, indifferent, and unemotional in court throughout the six-month ordeal.
In Peterson's case, deception was visible months before his trial. On Christmas Eve 2002, Laci's mother, Sharon Rocha, drove to her daughter's home immediately after Scott reported Laci missing. Police were already on the scene. When Scott arrived, Laci's mom observed that he "didn't look very upset and certainly not panicked" (Rocha 2006, 58). Later, she saw Scott standing alone in his driveway staring into the distance with a "strangely blank look on his face" (Rocha 2006, 58). Feeling sorry for Scott at the time, Sharon Rocha stepped forward to comfort him with a hug. As she moved toward Scott, he angled his body and shoulders away to his left. When she tried a second time to hug him, Scott again angled leftward to avoid her embrace.
Though he spoke to her in the driveway, Scott wouldn't make eye contact with his own mother-in-law, who was simply offering maternal comfort in the storm. What for her was an emotional storm was for him, apparently, just a breeze.
Angling away to one's right or left is a form of cutoff anthropologists call "angular distance." Angular distance is the spatial orientation, measured in degrees, of a listener's upper body in relation to a speaker's, either facing or angling away. Greater angular distance — turning farther away to the right or left — substitutes for greater linear distance, and reveals how we truly feel about someone.
Our upper body unwittingly squares up to, addresses, and "aims" at those we confide in and trust, but twists away from disliked persons and those we mistrust. Scott's amplified angular distance that evening clearly showed he had something to hide. Sharon Rocha didn't need an anthropologist to advise that Scott's "something" was terribly, terribly wrong.
Throughout the investigation of Laci Peterson's disappearance, Scott Peterson showed few indications of grief or sadness. He displayed no shock, remorse, surprise, disgust, or anger. Scott did not blink faster, his lips did not tighten, his eyebrows did not lift. His body withdrew in full-fledged nonverbal lockdown. As a relative noted, Scott got more upset over a piece of burned barbecued chicken than over his missing wife.
Since Peterson never testified, we did not see his demeanor under oath on the witness stand. But between his wife's disappearance and his own arrest, he made several TV appearances and put his body squarely on prime-time display. Nonverbally, the most telling show was his January 27, 2003, Good Morning America interview with Diane Sawyer.
At the beginning of the interview, Scott cried as he told of walking their golden retriever, McKenzie, in the park where his wife used to walk the dog. But Scott's rare show of emotion stood in stark contrast to his cold demeanor in subsequent interviews, and later in court. In the Good Morning America segment, a window opened on Peterson's deceptive body language:
"Did you murder your wife?" Sawyer had asked point-blank.
"No," Scott answered. His demeanor was visibly subdued, and his tone of voice calm. Dressed in a white shirt, mauve tie, and tan suit with a "Missing Laci" button on its left lapel, Peterson comported himself as a clean-cut, eager young man on a job interview. He smiled, leaned forward, tilted his head sideward, coyly clasped his hands together in his lap, and innocently gazed into Sawyer's eyes.
Peterson looked as charming on TV as he'd looked to Sharon Rocha at their first meeting in Morro Bay, California, outside the Pacific Café. But immediately after his televised denial to Sawyer — "No" — Scott hemmed and hawed, punctuated his monotone answers with "uhs," "ahs," and "ums," and made numerous hesitations with audible, breathy exhalations. Vocally, by almost any standard of paralanguage, Peterson's repeated pauses test positive for deception.
Vocal tension, throat tightness, and throat clearings are highly responsive to stimuli from the emotional brain. The slightest anxiety can tighten a voice box. Neural impulses are carried by special visceral nerves, originally designed for feeding, which are unusually sensitive to transitory sentiments, feelings, and moods. While lying, gut feelings of anxiety and nervousness showed as Scott's throat, larynx, and pharynx muscles tightened. As Scott's tongue pronounced the words, his throat gave voice to his lies.
Later in her interview, Sawyer asked Peterson if he'd told police about his affair with girlfriend Amber Frey: "Did you tell the police?"
"I told the police immediately," Scott answered. But according to the case's lead detective, Craig Grogan, Scott's answer was a bald-faced lie. Grogan's observation that the defendant had verbally lied corroborated the nonverbal evidence in Sawyer's interview — Scott's hemming, hawing, and uh-filled pauses, each of which pointed to deception.
Later, when the Good Morning America segment was shown in court, jurors got to see Scott Peterson's body language in tandem with his words. For a nonverbal analysis, this is the best of all possible worlds. Jurors could see Peterson's body language in different contexts, and presented with a variety of topics. The defendant could lie about one thing, tell the truth about another, and abstain on yet another. In a long interview, differences and similarities in contextual demeanor can be telling.
"Did you murder your wife?" "Did you tell the police?" Scott answered both questions using precisely the same body language. For each, he was quietly collected and composed. There were no exclamatory voice tones, no adamant hand gestures, no insistent head shakes of denial. He lied in both answers, so his nonverbal demeanor was predictably the same. Save for a labored larynx, on the video Scott seemed unruffled and relaxed.
One of the jurors, however, was not so relaxed. As he watched Scott answer Sawyer's second question — "Did you tell the police?" — Juror 8 "rolled his eyes, shook his head and stared at Peterson in apparent disbelief" (Hewitt et al. 2004, 71). Scott's demeanor while answering Diane's first question — "Did you murder your wife?" — was suspiciously like that while answering the second: seemingly calm and collected.
Upon conviction, Scott Peterson showed no emotion, save for a visibly clenched jaw, according to eyewitness Tim Ryan, a CBS Radio News reporter in the courtroom. The jaw clench, usually a sign of anger, is given as masseter muscles tense the jaws in preparation for biting. The trigeminal nerve (cranial V), which contracts these muscles, is an emotionally sensitive, special visceral nerve. For a fleeting moment, at least, Scott's face tipped his hand.
Jurors in the case suggested that Peterson's lack of visible emotion is what led to his death sentence. Juror Michael Belmessieri complained that Scott showed "no remorse." Juror Greg Beratlis would have liked to hear the sound of Peterson's voice on the witness stand. For juror Richelle Nice, Scott's show of "no emotion" upon hearing the verdict spoke "a thousand words." For all the thousands of words actually spoken in court, the single most memorable image was the defendant's neutral, expressionless, deadpan face. In speech and demeanor, he was emphatically, nonverbally guilty.
RESEARCH ON NONVERBAL SIGNS OF LYING
In "A Case of Identity," Sherlock Holmes observes a suspect's stammering speech, his "head sunk upon his breast," and the "glitter of moisture on his brow." Though Miss Sutherland's evil stepfather never confesses to masking his face and disguising his voice to woo her affection, his body gives voice to the lie. "There's a cold-blooded scoundrel!" Holmes concludes.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Crime Signals by David Givens. Copyright © 2008 David Givens. Excerpted by permission of St. Martin's Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title Page,Copyright Notice,
Dedication,
Acknowledgments,
Preface: A Preliminary Musing,
INTRODUCTION: CRIME SIGNALS BEFORE AND AFTER THE CRIME,
1. THE LOOK OF A LIE,
2. THE MEANING IN HANDS, SHOULDERS, LIPS, AND EYES,
3. MARKS OF THE SWINDLER,
4. A SILENT CRY: THE KILLER'S WARNING SIGNS,
5. PRELUDE TO AN ASSAULT,
6. THE PREDATORY LOOK,
7. TERROR INTERRUPTED,
8. READING THE GANG SIGNS,
9. CORRUPT BUSINESS DESIGNS,
10. THE SYMBOLS OF AN ADDICTION,
11. TO CATCH A THIEF,
CONCLUSION,
Bibliography,
Also by David Givens,
Copyright,
What People are Saying About This
“CRIME SIGNALS offers a comprehensive interpretation of nonverbal body language. By giving the reader an anthropological, biological, social, and psychological, perspective of body language, David Givens offers readers insight into the behaviors of criminal personalities. If we are alert to the signals of criminal intent, we can better protect ourselves and the ones we love.”
–Leigh Baker, author of Protecting Your Children from Sexual Predators.
“CRIME SIGNALS gives the reader valuable insights into human behavior and, most importantly, cues to criminal behavior that can help you from becoming a victim.”
–Chief Alan Lanning, La Mesa Police Department
“David Givens has once more written a remarkable book which will be of immediate utility to those interested in the latest research on nonverbal communications. Where Gavin de Becker’s The Gift of Fear introduced us to the brain’s ability to warn us of danger, David Givens’s CRIME SIGNALS completes our circle of knowledge, teaching us how to assess and decipher the warning signs of danger and criminal activity. In one exquisite, easy to read volume, David Givens has dissected the behaviors of murderers, child abusers, even terrorists, as no one else has before. By exposing the pre offense, offense, and post offense behaviors of criminals, David Givens has put together an exceptional text for reading criminal behavior. Incorporating the latest research in nonverbal behavior, psychology, neurology, physiology, and the social sciences, David Givens simplifies the complex and marries it up with actual cases from today’s headlines. This book is not just for law enforcement officers, it is for anyone who is concerned about their own safety and the safety of their loved ones. This is a must read.”
–Joe Navarro, FBI Special Agent (ret.), author of What Every Body is Saying.
“This savvy, street-smart field guide to the many ways the hands, eyes, jaws, shoulders, and sweat glands of criminals betray what they’re about to do and what they have done is a must-read. Find out why you should worry, for example, if you see men entering an airport in single file, or if you see people standing like statues within a convenience store.”
–Connie Fletcher, author of Crime Scene: Inside the World of the Real CSIs
“Sorting the truth from lies and trying to understanding the criminal mind is a frustrating and elusive goal, but in CRIME SIGNALS David Givens takes us one step closer with a useful and fascinating overview of the movement, voice, and body language of those who do us harm.”
–Gary M. Lavergne, author of Sniper in the Tower: The Charles Whitman Murders
“An essential tool for warding off crime and protecting us against people who want to harm us… Filled with fascinating real-life stories of crime and survival, Crime Signals is a highly informative book that will help us read a stranger's body language so that we can eliminate many of the harmful situations that are, unfortunately, more and more common in the dangerous society in which we live. In the criminal world, nonverbal signs, signals and cues speak louder than words, and many of the survival tips in this book should help many of us feel more secure and safe in our daily lives.” —Tuscon Citizen