2011-10-09
This is unbelievable:
When Lou Tessmann retired from the Waukegan police in 2005, the Illinois House of Representatives passed a resolution praising his two decades of service. The resolution noted that Tessmann, a former Marine, is “well known for his interrogation techniques on suspects of crimes.”… Mr. Tessmann has obtained over 80 homicide confessions during his career with only three instances where he was unable to obtain a confession from a homicide suspect” — a 96 percent success rate — according to the Web site of his employer, Wicklander-Zulawski & Associates. NY Times, 2011-11-26
For a better understanding of what Tessmann is really up to, check out someone with similar or identical skills: Darren Brown.
So what we have here is an interrogator who, if you put him in a room with somebody, will be able to persuade this person to confess to a serious felony 96% of the time.
Which means that 96% of the time, the police have guessed right: the first guy they hand over to Tessmann is the “right” suspect.
Do you believe that there is a 96% probability of this happening? I don’t. I don’t believe the real number is even close to that. In fact, I believe that 96% is a preposterous number.
Unfortunately, I have no doubt that a lot of people will believe that, indeed, the police have the right suspect almost 100% of the time.
I firmly believe that if you chose someone at random, off the streets, and put Lou Tessemann in the room with him, you would have a confession 96% of the time. To what? What would you like him to confess to? Name it.
In fact, Tessemann has been sued successfully more than once for precisely that.
It gets worse: in at least one case, he blatantly lied that a mother had told him that “six children were enough” and, therefore, she killed her own seventh child. (DNA testing later proved the dead child could not have been hers.)
I don’t think it would be enough to make sure this guy never participates in another interrogation. I believe he should be charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice and sent to prison for 20 years or more: he is a criminal in the precise sense of the word.