Forced Confessions
Why Innocent Defendants Admit their "Guilt"
The series of articles in this issue of The Revisionist addresses the question how it could be explained that many witnesses to the so-called 'Holocaust' testified about events that did not take place in the way described or not at all.
From a psychological standpoint of trying to make the revisionist position understandable to Johnny Doe, it is even more important to explain how defendants, who are accused – whether in trials or only in public – to have participated in, or merely been indifferent to, certain crimes, could confess their guilt even though it can be shown that they are innocent – most radically because the reported crimes did not happen at all.
In my analysis of “The Value of Testimony and Confessions Concerning the Holocaust,”[1] I pointed out several factors, which can lead a defendant to believe against his own recollection that he is guilty for a crime he did not commit or which did not happen in the first place. Third degree torture, that is the infliction of painful physical injuries, is only one means to this end. Although it certainly was occasionally applied during interrogations in the early years after the war – Rudolf Höß[2] and the infamous Dachau trials[3] being the most prominent examples – it is correct to conclude with Arthur Butz[4] that physical violence is hardly ever capable to changing the mind and mindset of a defendant permanently. He might sign a statement right after the torture, but he is not likely to support it once he is out of reach of his torturers.
Much more effective are various brain washing techniques – also referred to as second degree torture – which change the memory and the mindset of the defendant. If not treated psychologically, this can have dramatic lasting effects. The following example, taken from a recent media report, highlights that such techniques are quite frequently used and have little to do with sophisticated psychological techniques or psycho-pharmaceuticals – quite contrary to popular belief. All that is needed is to isolate the defendant for an extended period of time from the outside world, to put him under emotional stress, and to expose him repeatedly to the stories he is supposed to endorse.
If we consider the situation of almost all defendants involved in trials of so-called National Socialist Violent Crimes, then it can easily be seen that in these cases the situation of the defendant was as extreme as it could get, whether it was during the trials in Dachau, Nuremberg, Krakow and elsewhere in 1945-1948, or during all the post-war trials held since 1949 in West Germany, or the Eichmann and Demjanjuk trials in Jerusalem: All defendants were locked away for years prior to the actual start of the trial proceedings. They were for years exposed to massive accusation of involvement of the most atrocious crimes, facing the destruction of their lives, either by capital punishment or by high prison sentences, and heard 'Holocaust' stories from public prosecutors, police officers, witnesses, the media, and sometimes perhaps even from their own defense lawyers. It would have required an enormously strong will and psychological resistance to withstand such tremendous mind-mending pressure.
Most defendants, of course, were not that strong. Eichmann, for example, succumbed totally. Others, like most defendants of the Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Majdanek trials, did not dare or could not imagine to contest the general story, but merely tried to save their own skin as good as possible, which was the only realistic defense strategy anyway, objectively seen, since trying to contest the entire story would have brought the wrath of the entire world upon both defendants and – more importantly and effectively – the defense lawyers.[5]
Reading the following dramatic story of everyday life in the United States should make everybody think twice before taking confessions of defendants in 'Nazi' trials at face value.
Why Innocent People Confess to Murder
One night in April 1993, someone slit the throats of Gary Gauger's elderly parents on their farm near Richmond, Illinois. It was bad enough for Gauger to learn of his parents' violent death, but it turned out that his nightmare was just beginning.
Gauger told police that he was asleep on the property when his parents, Morris, 74, and Ruth, 70, were killed. But the police didn't buy it, and brought him in for interrogation. After 21 hours of questioning, Gauger broke down and confessed to a crime he did not commit.
Though police had no physical evidence against him, the confession was enough to persuade a jury to convict him of double murder. He was sentenced to death.
Two years later, in an unrelated federal investigation, surveillance tapes captured a member of a motorcycle gang bragging about how he and another gang member had killed the Gaugers. The gang members were later convicted of the murders and other crimes, and Gauger was freed in 1996, after spending three years behind bars.
Every year, thousands of criminals are convicted on the basis of confessions obtained from police interrogations. Experts say law enforcement interrogation techniques are so effective that they can break down the most hardened criminal – and even people who are innocent of the crime they are being accused of. Experts believe there have been hundreds of cases where innocent men succumbed to interrogation and confessed to crimes they did not commit.
“You take someone who is vulnerable, like a grieving family member or someone who isn't used to being confronted by police,” says Rich Fallin, a former Maryland police officer who specialized in interrogations, “If interrogated long enough, they'll probably confess.”
Assuming Police Tell the Truth
During his interrogation, Gauger says, he kept denying any involvement with the murders. But he says police told him they had evidence. He mistakenly assumed police would not lie to him, an assumption often made by innocent people undergoing interrogation, according to experts.
“They told me that they had found bloody clothes in my bedroom; they found a bloody knife in my pocket,” says Gauger, who never asked for an attorney, because he felt he had nothing to hide.
At about 1 a.m., he says, the interrogation turned ugly. Police showed him gruesome crime scene photos of his dead parents, sending him into an emotional freefall. The combination of losing his parents and being told by police repeatedly that he was a liar and killer was just too much.
“I was emotionally distraught, looking at these people for help,” he says. “They wouldn't stop the interrogation. I was exhausted. I gave up.” Though Gauger had no memory of the crime, he ended up believing what police told him. “I thought I must have done it in a blackout,” he says.
None of what Gauger described surprises Fallin. “They're kept in an interview room, in a cold interview room, with very little clothing on for hours and hours,” he says, adding that people are often not given anything to drink or allowed to use the bathroom while being interrogated.
The detectives who interrogated Gauger refused to be interviewed by ABC NEWS, but their lawyer in Gauger's ongoing lawsuit denied that police lied. “I believe that the circumstances surrounding the interview of Gary Gauger were completely appropriate,” says Jim Sotos, a defense attorney for the police, who is still trying to raise doubts about Gauger's innocence, even though another man is in jail for the crime.
Psychological Warfare
Allen Chestnet says he also fell victim to “thorough investigation.” In May 1998, the developmentally disabled man, then 16, cut his hand at his home in Maryland. As he was sitting on his front porch, local reporters covering the murder of Chestnet's neighbor saw him. After noticing blood on his hand, they called state police.
Chestnet, who had no violent history, was picked up and interrogated for hours.
During the interrogation, he says, police seemed to have no doubts about his guilt.
“He was like, 'I know you did it, so why are you lying to me?'” says Chestnet. “They had me so upset, I wasn't thinking right.”
For hours, he says, his interrogators told him he was a killer and said his denials were lies that were only getting him in deeper. He says he was desperate to appease the cops, who offered him an easy way out: by confessing.
Even after authorities determined that his DNA did not match traces found at the crime scene, Chestnet was kept in jail until November 1998, where he says he was stabbed and raped twice by other inmates. Authorities contend they still had reason to suspect his involvement in the murder.
To this day, Chestnet says he's afraid of the police. He is suing authorities over his arrest and incarceration.
In both the Chestnet and Gauger cases, police initially refused to admit they had coerced a confession from an innocent man, despite evidence clearing the suspect. According to Fallin, this kind of attitude is pervasive among interrogators.
“Some of the detectives are hot shots. Some of them know they're good, know they can get a confession,” he says. “Nobody tells them what to do or how to do it.”
“They Wore Me Down”
In Raymond Wood's case, detectives in Maine had nothing more than suspicion that he had hit his girlfriend with a car and killed her. But police turned up the heat to entice him to confess.
Wood had argued with his girlfriend, Bessie Selek, when he says he got fed up and drove to a store. Bessie, according to witnesses, left home soon after with a blood alcohol level of 0.28, walking in the opposite direction on a dark, remote road. She was hit by a car and killed.
Raymond Wood's interrogation was videotaped
“You have no idea how much evidence I have, Raymond, do you hear me?,” one of the cops said during the interrogation, which was videotaped.
In fact, witnesses reported seeing a van with a broken headlight speeding from the scene. Wood's van had two working headlights. Also, a shattered bug shield at the scene didn't match the van Wood was driving.
Wood repeatedly denied any involvement in his girlfriend's death, but the police pressure was too much for him. After about six hours in police custody, he gave in.
“They literally, they wore me down. I was going through emotional torture by these people,” he says. “They convinced me that I had to have done it.”
After seeing the videotape, a judge threw out his confession and police dropped all charges, but not before Wood spent a year in jail. Police declined to be interviewed, citing an ongoing investigation into Selek's death. But in a statement, they stood by their detectives.
Wood is free, but says it won't really be over until there's an apology from police.
“It would take them down off their God-like pedestal, that [they] can make no mistakes,” says Wood, who would prefer an apology to financial compensation. “It would make them human again.”
ABC News, March 15, 2003
Notes
| [1] | In Germar Rudolf (ed.) Dissecting the Holocaust, Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, IL, 2003, pp. 85-131. |
| [2] | Ibid., p. 96 |
| [3] | Ibid., p. 92ff. |
| [4] | Arthur R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, 3rd ed., Theses & Dissertations Press, Chicago, IL, 2003, pp. 235f. |
| [5] | The only lawyer who ever went a little into that direction while defending an alleged 'perpetrator' by challenging witness testimony in general was defense lawyer Ludwig Böck during the Majdanek trial, and he subsequently felt the heat of public outrage, cf. M. Köhler, op. cit. (note 1), pp. 109f. Today, it is illegal in Germany even for defense lawyers to challenge the 'Holocaust' as such, cf. ibid., p. 110. |
Bibliographic information about this document: The Revisionist 1(4) (2003), pp. 465f.
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