You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK.

Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history.

True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.

Good evening from the author of the critically acclaimed true crime account A Killer by Design, the inspiration behind Hulu's original docuseries, Mastermind comes a groundbreaking look into the crucial role played by expert witnesses in the most high profile criminal cases.

Based on doctor Anne Burgess's personal experiences within the criminal justice system.

Written through Burgess's singular lens of compassion and lived experience, Expert Witness pulls back the curtain on some of the biggest cases in the last thirty years, from Bill Cosby to the Menendez Brothers to Larry Nasser, to reveal the deeply human stories behind the trials that have captivated a nation.

The book explores the role of expert witnesses in high stakes court cases, offering first hand accounts and never before seen interviews with attorneys, victims, and offenders.

Expert Witness places listeners inside the mind of the nation's most prominent courtroom expert, following Burgess as she takes on one seismic case after the next.

The narrative each case deepens the listener's understanding of the art and science of expert testimony, taking listeners from the Women's movement of the nineteen seventies to the Me Too movement of today, one of the largest social reckonings in recent history.

At its core, Expert Witness is a story of empowerment.

It's a story of compassion and the ever increasing need for individuals to stand up and speak truth to power or to popular opinion.

And it's ultimately a story of how revolutionary one voice can be.

The book that we're featuring this evening is Expert Witness, The Weight of our Testimony when Justice Hangs in the balance, with my special guest, psychiatric nurse, professor and author and Burgess.

Thank you very much for this interview and welcome to the program.

And Burgess, thank you very much.

Dan happy to be here.

Thank you so much, and congratulations on this new book, Expert Witness.

Let's talk about that.

You are a leading forensic and psychiatric nurse who worked with the FBI for over two decades.

Currently, you're a professor at the Boston College Canal School of Nursing and you live in Boston, Massachusetts.

And this book is co written by Stephen Matthew Constantine.

Also you wrote a Killer by Design with Stephen as well.

Yes, I did.

In the chapter the Rise of the Expert Witness, you talk about that there's nothing more absolute than a courtroom.

It's the biggest stage for the biggest cases, with the highest stakes.

What do you write is the purpose of the trial?

What is it all?

Always come down to tell us about the singular goal that you have and tell us about the phrase that you've taken as a personal mantra.

Yes, well, the purpose in the courtroom is obviously not necessarily obviously, but to seek truth.

You have always had a conflict.

There are two sides, and they often say very opposite things.

So the expert witness and that they can have an expert witness on both sides.

So it's a matter of pacing information before a jury that you hope will make a difference.

That my goal in bringing it is to bring forward what I call the nursing science.

Nursing because that's my background, my discipline.

But where are we at and understanding the matter before the court?

So that's my main goal there is you've got to you're sworn in.

You have to tell the truth, and I tell the truth if you will, from the perspective of the case that I have been working on.

So and it can be for either the defense side, or it can be for the prosecution side if it's in a criminal matter, or it can be for the plaintiff and for the defense if it's in the civil arena.

Tell us how with your background as a psychiatric nurse, how you in the early seventies first came to want to be an expert witness.

Okay, I never wanted to be an expert witness.

I didn't really realize in the beginning, way back in the seventies just what that entailed.

But I was asked to help in the very first case I had was a great case, and I happened to be speaking at a conference, and after the conference, the two attorneys came up and said they had this case and would I be interested in looking at it and letting them know what my opinion was.

That's really how it started.

Then, that was back in nineteen eighty.

So I did not realize that this case would necessarily go to court.

They don't all go to court.

In fact, many of the civil cases end up being settled.

It's called being settled, and so you don't have to go into court, but you always have to prepare in case it doesn't settle and the two sides need to meet up in this courtroom.

So that was my initiation, if you will, back in nineteen eighty and after that, because the issue of rape was becoming quite a front burner type of issue, certainly in the women's movement and for Congress.

They had just established a National Center for the Prevention and Control of Rape, So all of those things were converging at a time when I was doing had really just done the research on the rape victim and that was with Linda Holmstrom while I was at Boston College.

I guess you're talking about the research project that was focused on understanding the emotional and traumatic effects of rape and sexual assault.

That's correct.

It was really we started to be the voice for the victims that they didn't have a voice.

Nobody was speaking for them.

When I say we, that's Linda Holmster on myself, and she knew that was going to be an issue.

So that's what we focused on, seeing one hundred and forty six people over a one year period into a large city hospital to hear about why they were there with the what is called the chief complaint of rape.

You're right that this case with Jane demonstrated many of the biases and the difficulty in people coming forward, wanting to come forward to and then the prosecution, the dismal prosecution rate of anybody being prosecuted for rape or sexual assault.

But you said the things changed culturally back in when Connie Francis, a famous singer, was raped in their own home, So you talk about Jane also being at that apex of the time in culture when people looked at victims of rape and sexual assault much differently.

Absolutely, absolutely that was what That was one of the important things in the case with Jane, even her family.

It wasn't just citizens, you know, every citizens, but it was the family and couldn't understand why she couldn't get over it.

That was the other big part of working with victims, because we followed them and people would can't you just get over this?

And we realized that we had something here that was far more than people understood.

And that's what we tried to bring forward in my case.

I brought it forward in the courtroom is whenever I had a case and I was called to do it.

So tell us a little bit more about Jane's case and in your involvement in the case itself.

Yeah, James's case was very, very instructive for me.

It was one of the first of course that and I got the case, not necessarily because of the project we were working on, but because of a detective, a detective Rufo who knew of the work that we were doing at Boston City Hospital.

They had taken Jane to a different hospital and he said that you really need to talk with this person, me who has been working with rape victims, and so he put me in touch.

He had returned from Boston back to New Jersey, so we first met over a phone call.

But the other important part of Jane's story is because I've looked at and that's what expert witness reports on what has happened to the three men that raped her.

Doing a follow up what thirty some years later to see how Boston treated and followed through on a case that was essentially a gang rape.

Jane had been just moved into Boston.

She was here for a new job.

She was all excited, had a new apartment of Beacon Hill, a very very fine area in Boston, and she had friends that were expected to come overs right after Thanksgiving and she was expecting friends.

And two o'clock in the afternoon there was a knock on her door and she really thought it was her friends.

Opens the door and in March these three young men and for the next couple of hours put her through a grueling rape and throw her in the closet, threatened that they'll kill her, etc.

Et cetera.

Then when they leave, she does call the police.

The police send their patrol officers over, they take a report, and they luckily report it right back to the precinct.

Then they send over the detective and what the detective learns is what solves the case for them.

It's something that I learned about.

He said as Jane was telling her story that the men called for a cab and he said, do you know what kind of a cab And she said, they said, a brown cab.

Well, we happened in the city of Boston.

Have cab company that was called Brown and was Brown that did it?

He said he had not had that information from the patrol officers.

So immediately got on the phone and luckily got the cab driver who remembered the three men taking a cab and where he dropped them off, and that was the beginning of solving the case.

You did something to literally support Jane and to show her that there were people that believed in her and were ready to stand up and support her.

What did you do at this trial?

Right?

Yeah, at this trial, I was not there as an expert witness.

I was there because I had been working with her and providing some kind of counseling for her, and I realized that this was going to be an important step for her, and I wanted support more than just my support.

So I had all of my students at the time, I was teaching a course, and I all, uh, when Jane was there and I was there, and all my students were there sitting very very carefully right in the courtroom.

So that was a good experience, not only for me obviously for Jane to have that support, but the students too.

As a result of this trial, what did you decide to do?

What did you feel you necessary for you to become.

Well?

Because of this Jane, I stayed in touch with her and she did move back.

She hadn't totally moved out.

She was staying with friends, and she would come to my class in dactymology and became So it was support not only in terms of counseling, which I would do individually, but she had an opportunity to hear about other types of victim situations, and she would speak up in class.

She told the students about her experience, and I've had her several times come back and talk about her experience, and I think that's a very important learning experience for students to hear from victims directly, because it's rare, certainly back then and even today, that victims will admit that they had an experience of a sexual assault or a rape or whatever.

Let's jes this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.

Now, you write that you knew that you had to establish yourself as an official expert witness to really help people out like Jane in the future at court.

And then you write some time after you had heard about the Menendez murders and you didn't know anything about it till you got a call from a friend, John Conti, April nineteen ninety.

Tell us who he was and what was the nature of the call.

Sure, well, John Conti at the time, I knew him as a colleague.

He was at the University of Chicago originally, and he became the editor of a journal called Journal of Into Personal Violence.

And so I had been working with him around that and we stayed in touch.

We would go to conferences, etc.

And so he called me one day and started talking about this Menendez case, which I did not know anything about.

And he finally said, I think, in desperation, will go down to your local store and get a copy of People magazine and he can read all about it.

And I did, and of course People Magazine had their own twists to the case.

And he said, if you're interested, I'll give your name to Leslie Abramson, who was the attorney that was monitoring or leading the Eric Menendez.

John had already signed on to Lyle Menendez's case, and Leslie was still looking for an expert on that one.

Now by then, of course, this was the nineties, and I had had a fair amount of experience, but certainly not in a high profile case like this turned out to be.

You had to look at this case.

Why were you interest did once you found out some details?

Well?

I was interested because in talking with John, I said, well, what was the motive?

I said, this talks about their greed and their money, wanting money, et cetera.

And I said, this sounds like kids that have any money that they want.

They had open credit cards and access to money.

And that's what John agreed.

He said yes, because he couldn't.

He was trying to figure out the motive too.

So we took in our opinion money was not the primary thing.

I said, something like this, where it's a double paraside case, highly unusual that two siblings would murder their parents, both parents.

I think there's only a well, maybe one hundred cases total in the whole history of that.

So I said, got to be something in the family, something's going on in this family that would cause such violent reaction in these two.

And so that's where we began to put our interest is to find out more about the families.

And John actually had he had by that time gone to New Jersey, interviewed many of the cousins and found out that there was a pretty odd kind of way that they treated the brothers, and that was essentially from the father, Jose Menendez.

So by the time I started interviewing Eric, I had an idea of a motive certainly was not just over money.

And he said in the first there was a week prior to the shootings that was pivotal, absolutely pivotal in this case.

And he said it started on a Tuesday when he had planned to go to uc San Francisco, and the father said, no, you're going to go to UCLA.

It's right here in town and you can.

I'll get you a moped and you can ride back and forth and you will be here at night, not going to stay in the dorm.

And that was a jolt for Eric.

He thought he was going to be able to get away.

Now.

The brother lyle had had plans.

He was leaving in that next week to go back to the East Coast.

He was at Princeton.

I think, yeah, at Princeton, and so both I thought it was interesting that both brothers had plans to lead.

When they say, well, why didn't you just leave, you know, the prosecution said that the point was they had planned to leave, but not leave because of exposing any of the of the incense that was going on, but to get away from the family.

So that's where we put together and began to find out what was actually going on.

It's very interesting that you employed a certain psychological technique in order for you to get Eric to be able to reveal the details of not only before the murder, but during the actual murder itself.

Yes, I did.

I had used drawings or sketched whatever you want to call him, primarily with younger people as a way because they have more difficulty expressing themselves or talking at length, so to speak.

So I would have them draw what happened.

And it was a way not to lead them in any way.

You don't want to lead them.

You don't want to say, well, now, so and so did something to you.

Can you draw that?

No, just say what happened in such an incident.

So I said, I'm going to try that with Eric, because I've got to spend all this time with him, and if he you know, he just I can't tape record and I didn't want to just sit there and take notes.

So I brought in some magic markers and paper.

I had them uncuff him.

So that he had access to that, and I I said, let's just go through this week that you just told me about, and let's draw it.

Have you draw it, and then we can go back and forth.

I can say, well, now you said this happened on Tuesday.

Now what happened on Thursday?

Or what happened on Wednesday?

And then you get to the Sunday, of course, which is when the shootings occurred.

And I was able to use that, and I was amazed at how he drew, not being a part therapist, of course, but I could certainly see that there was a lot to these drawings.

And he did sixteen of them, and they really tell the story of that week just before the shootings.

And I felt that that I didn't know whether they would be used in quart or not, and they decided that they wouldn't.

I remember Leslie saying, well, these look to juvenile.

They'll make fun of them.

And I thought to myself, Well, the point that they look juvenile is the point, right, that's the main point of how they felt, how regressed they felt in this.

And the parents had this looming much exaggerated size compared to the to the brothers of how he drew them, and so there's a lot in there.

I later have had a art therapist look at them because I thought I'm not one, but let's see what she could do, and she really pretty much confirmed.

We have since actually run it through chat ID to see what the chat would do, what AI would make of these drawings verbal of course, the verbalization, because he would write on the drawing what was going on.

So we had some very interesting dialogue between he and the brother, the mother, the father.

You were hired to try to explain how these people could kill their parents, regardless of anything, but you also wanted to explain rape trauma syndrome, or Leslie wanted you to explain rape trauma syndrome.

So how with the rape trauma syndrome, how do you explain how these people were able to kill their parents and why?

Sure, Well, by the time of the trial, which would now be ninety I think nineteen ninety two, the shootings occurred in eighteen nineteen eighty nine, so it was about three years later.

But what was going on then and that I was involved in with my team, is of the decade of the Brain is what they called it.

A lot of research money was going into understanding the brain and how it worked, especially in high stress situations.

So what I was able to do is to take we actually had a paper out just about that time to explain where in the brain it's called the Olympic system houses the important areas that control your thinking, that control your emotion, that can control a lot of what is important in terms of actions.

And so I use that to explain the new research.

And I also they were doing the study on the apple c snail.

Now I took a lot of backlash on that, but it proved itself because it has a very similar nervous system as we have, and they were doing very interesting exhibit or research on that.

So I use that to explain why and how they were finding these areas in the brain and the Olympic system that could account for people's actions.

And that's what I explained, the Olympic system.

I also use the analogy to a computer of how information goes in and what happens when it doesn't get processed, when it doesn't get quote, if you will, using a word of process, and so I use those two.

I have used those in other times that I've testified, and if you read my trial testimony, of course it's in there.

You say that there was a parallel trial going on of sorts, with the court, TV playboy reporter Robert rand taking the side of the prosecution and Dennis Dunne taking the sign of the defense, and so opposing views on this trial.

While the trial was going on.

Yes, there was a lot of media obviously a lot of media coverage and the LA whichever times.

I don't know which paper it was, but they had these two opposite sides, and I'll never forget the dominic.

Dunn took me aside after I was testifying and said he wanted to talk with me because he was beginning to maybe doubt some of his position that this was all for money and greed and that kind of thing, and he was listening rather intently to the testimony about what would cause someone to be in such fear.

What I was trying to explain, and the rape trauma syndrome does, is that the reaction that victims have to a threatening situation of fear is what can produce them to act in ways that seemed counterintuitive.

So it was unfortunately what happened is another high profile case the came up and so he didn't get it we never got a chance to exchange how that meeting that he wanted to have, but I always thought it was interesting that he did approach me and want.

To talk about it.

You write about the verdict in this case after Eric testifies.

The jury is split in believing Eric's testimony.

Tell us about that, Yes.

And I got that information from Hazel Thornton.

Hazel Thornton was number eight as a juror in the first men in this trial Eric's team.

And so she said that what they did and when they went into the jury room for the very first time, she said, it was really wrong what they did.

They asked everybody to raise their hand and whether they were for murder one or whether they were for the I think the other was a lesser charge, obviously, And she said all of the men put their hand up for murder one, all of the women for the lesser charge.

And she said it never varied from them all of their deliberations.

And she said it would have been much better if they had had a paper ballot or something so that people wouldn't necessarily see what gender was doing what vote.

But right from the start, the men did not believe.

They believed the secution obviously, whereas the women felt that there was the possibility they could understand sexual assault, they could understand fear, and they could understand that the behavior, even though it was what called imperfect, it was an imperfect defense that it might not make sense to people listening the case, but to the two brothers it did, and that was important.

I think the gender bias was very clear right from the start.

So of course in the second trial they took out any testimony to a motive.

And you talk about judge Wiseberg sort of his bias was very evident in the trials.

I felt it was in reviewing the case, and I thought a lot of other people did too.

I've seen some writings to that effect, is that it seemed unusual to remove expert witnesses because he didn't believe them.

Well, that was really the jury, in my opinion, that was the jury's call.

This was not a bench trial where the judge could make his own decision.

It also demonstrated that, strangely or not strangely, that in the nineties there was this sort of general it seemed to come from the judge and just in general, that the idea, the notion that men could be abused.

Not so believable that men could be abused by their father.

Yeah.

I think that was the important point, is that it wasn't just the general theme of men getting sexually abused, but it was the particular issue of a father having sex with his son.

But I thought felt that the certainly Eric and Lyle did explain it.

That was the other thing is they had those two brothers on the stand for extensive amount of time and they were very clear.

I felt that if you, I think it was almost ten days that Eric had to testify, that's a long time or a prosecutor to try to make a point and didn't obviously didn't make the point because half of the jurors did not buy in to their motive.

It's very interesting when you fast forward to just recently in the new developments in the Menendez trial and the effort to have them released.

Very interesting in the cultural attitudeal shift since then.

Yes, thirty five years has made a difference, and I think it The case only came into view about five years ago and I got a call from another college in the area saying, were you be one of the experts in the Menendez case?

And we have a group they had a whole group that were banding together to try to see if they could bring some vision to this case and a new vision.

And I didn't realize that there was this kind of movement among young people, college students that they wanted to revisit the case, and that of course led to I think one of the docum or two of the documentaries on the case, and eventually did bring it obviously to the district attorney out in LA So thirty five years can make a difference, Now, did it make a difference.

I was very interested to see whether in the parole hearings they would be they would vote for a nineteen ninety two version or a nineteen ninety version, or whether they would this parole hearing group would pick a twenty twenty five position.

And you know what the verdict was in both cases, says they use interestingly enough their past behavior in jail in prison as their criteria their main criteria.

Yes, very very interesting.

Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.

Now, another very important, high profile and historic trial and case.

This is in the chapter you write dismantling of America's Dad and Andrea constant, thirty one year old, January two thousand and four.

Bill Cosby gives her a couple of pills and says these will help you relax.

Tell us about Rosalind Watts and your conversation with her and hearing about the news of America's dad and his downfall.

Yes, Rosin Watts was a colleague of mine when I was at the University of Pennsylvany, and we would often talk about cases.

We had a little group we often talk about cases, and the Cosby case had come up, and it was known that she had dated Bill Cosby, so we were very interested, I especially in how she was looking at this case.

And she was very firm and not believing that this could have happened.

She knew him from high school, I think had gone to a dance with him, and she just was adamant that this could not have happened.

There must be something that woman, that victim must not be telling the truth.

Well, as time went on and more and more information came out, she finally came around to us saying, and she worded it, that was not the Bill Cosby that I knew in high school, and I believe it.

You know, people can change, and so he finally did say that, but she never said he was a thing but a gentleman back then.

He wasn't into drugs.

He wasn't into any of the behavior that we saw or we heard about, certainly from Andrea I heard when I had an opportunity to interview her, or from any of the other multiple I think about thirty five women that came forward.

It was very clear that he had a really a ritual, if you want to call it, that to what he would do with the women did not vary from that, and had many, many victims, and they were all afraid to come forward except Andrea.

You were in June twenty sixteen, you got a call from Andrea, a Constance attorney.

They needed a consulting expert, someone who could talk to Constant and give a professional assessment of her overall mental health.

Right I did.

And Andrea flew down from Canada she lived in Canada at the time, and I interviewed her and wrote a report what had happened and how she had what certainly from a standpoint, what her symptoms were.

But this had followed Don't forget back in two thousand and three or four, the original complaint chief complaint.

You say, in that time period, that expanse of time, dozens of women had come forward to accuse them of sexual assault.

You say, culminating in something like a widespread cultural shift where victims were being supported rather than belittle.

Right in that time period, Sure, that was a good a decade.

And so with Andrea coming forward, and that happens a lot, or not a lot, but certainly happens in cases where it's a high profile case.

I'm thinking of cases of professional people where they will publish because they can published that so and so has accused so and so of a sexual assault, and others who have experienced that will come forward.

And that's exactly what happened.

Now, this was an unusual type of a sexual assault because the victim was usually unconscious of some type, whether given alcohol or in Andrea's case, it was three blue pills that I think later were identified and said these pills are going to relax you, and they did, but they relaxed her to the point where she lost consciousness.

So she then wakes up and of course doesn't have much memory.

So it was hard for those women to come forward because they didn't have as much memory as someone who obviously didn't lose consciousness.

You write about trauma being an expert, you say, trauma fractures a person's sense of self.

It creates a split.

There's the person who existed before for their trauma and the person who now exists because of their trauma.

Yes, so that's the way I would understand it and what they would tell me.

So I was just trying to explain it to people because they would often say why can't they just go on?

Why can't they say, oh, that was a bad situation, Especially when it's a known offender.

I'm not talking about stranger type situations.

And stranger type situations, people generally can believe it because they can't find any way to blame the victim.

Well, they can.

They can say, well, she shouldn't have been out walking, or she shouldn't have been doing wearing clothes like this, or something of that nature.

But on some of these cases where the offender breaks in victim is sleeping, that's very hard for people to dismiss as that it was somehow the victims fall.

Unless they can say, well, the window was open or your door was unlocked, they still will try to find some way to diminish the importance, and so I felt it was so because the victim, literally with Dross, has major changes in their thinking and especially about the self, the fracturing of the self.

They get into some of the same problems of did I do something wrong?

The self guilt can be a huge issue, and the shame and the embarrassment is another emotion that can prevent victims from coming forward.

So I felt in talking about what it does to the individual would be a way to try to reach people, to tell them how serious a sexual assault can be to the person's image of themselves and to their reason for or not coming forward.

You talk about people being reluctant to come forward and tell police about what has happened, and then you write about that constant despite having the DA Bruce Caster say that there was insufficient credible and admissible evidence, she was disappointed but undeterred, and she wanted to file a civil lawsuit, and she did in July twenty fifteen.

Can you tell us about sort of her ability to be able to get past that dejection and then file this lawsuit trying to get justice for the crimes from Bill Cosby?

Yes, Well, Andrew, there was a unique person.

Don't forget.

She was a sports She was a tall basketball player who had been in sports and had scholarships for sports.

So she was very strong and she was very brave, and so she was not going to take this.

She wanted to do it not for herself, but for all of the victims that she knew.

And this was in yeah, this was twenty sixteen.

There was some movement on going about understanding rape and understanding sexual assault.

So I think that her ability to move the field forward was so important and it did.

It really was the start of the quote me too movement when others could come forward too.

I think there was a New York The New Yorker had a cover of all of the little faces of the women that had come forward.

So they were not afraid anymore, and they were willing to put their experience on the line, if you will.

So I handed to Andrea to be able to do that.

She was very very important in winning the case.

She didn't went it right away.

There were actually two trials in one and it wasn't until the second trial when they judge allowed other prior complaints to be able to come forward, and that was helpful for the jury.

But still had trouble just believing one person they could understand when it was multiple victims.

Very interesting in this book was the idea that Cosby was subjected to a four day deposition, but in that deposition because he thought it would be sealed and the public would never hear about it.

He told of extra meritive affairs.

He testified to drugging women with queludes and using his celebrity status to stop allegations from surfacing, and sending hush money to pay off multiple victims.

That's all true.

He said that he was under oath.

He never thought it was going to come out.

I think that was the sticky point, if you will, And it wasn't until they were that changed and the ruling came that they could use it when it all came out.

I think that was important of how they try to cover up a good example of how offenders, especially high profile offenders.

We've seen other cases, of course across the country since then, what they will do to cover up, and a lot of money can be paid to silence victims.

That Jesus has an opportunity to stop to hear these messages.

When you talk about high profile there is the case that you were involved with with someone named Larry Nassar tell us what was what's the takeaway from this case involving Larry Nasser.

Well, the Larry Nasser case was very important because he was a professional.

He had his a doctor degree and he would in these athletics and these he targeted young adolescent girls and they would say stretch them and doing some of their activities, and he would say, well, I have a special way that I can fix that, and so he would do essentially what we would understand is a pelvic exam on the young girl.

And they would be horrified at it, but they because he said he was a doctor and he could fix it that they went along with it.

Now some didn't and they didn't go back to him, but many of them did.

I think he had hundreds of victims over time, and so that was a good example of a professional that can missuse, criminally misuse if you will, a procedure to satisfy his own sexual proclivities.

So that was a hard case because you had young young women at the time, and I saw some the one I think I put in the book she went back to him I think two or three times, and of course felt terrible and anguished over it, and until it finally came out, was thinking that something was wrong with her.

There's your self image that gets kind of split and fractured in any of these cases.

You know why am I feeling this way?

He is a doctor, he knows what he's doing, etc.

Etc.

So it really confuses the young victim.

And as I said, they were all pretty much young adolescent victims.

One of them I talked to it was years later.

Don't forget that she was well in her thirties and this has happened when she was like twelve or thirteen.

That's a long time to harbor as much emotion as the person has.

And that's what you find in some of these what we call prolonged cases.

In the Duke University lacrosse case very interesting if we were compare it to so or the case spoke about with Jeanne and her rape case.

Tell us about the Duke University lacrosse case, and again what it was demonstrated.

What was demonstrated with that case.

Well, in that case, it really tore apart the whole university.

This was two exotic dancers that were invited to perform and be paid at a bachelor party type and for the lacrosse team, and these two.

One of the two came forward to say that she had been raped.

What that set in motion was the lacrosse coach I think got fired.

I know eighty or so faculty came forward with a petition letter to say that this was outrageous that was going on and for the president to do something.

They had a lot of dissent over this case.

And what actually turned out is that when I looked at the case, I know that I was going to be on one of the reed Seligmann's team.

They divide up the three defendants.

Each one has their own team, and he was clearly able to show with evidence on his cell phone that he had left that this was not anything that he had done.

Others were able to do it.

But went on for a whole year.

The families were just I remember speaking with the families.

They were beside themselves with this.

It ruined the young men, they had to drop out of school.

And then finally it turned out I had to figure out how I was going to testify because the rape trauma syndrome.

Was it going to be used as the reason that this victim We'll call her a victim was able to say that she was raped, and we couldn't.

I couldn't go on the stand and say she was lying because I didn't know necessarily that I had to be able to explain it and was prepared to.

There was interesting information about her psychiatric history where she had had a young fourteen year old had had a gang rape by three men against same kind of thing, and could this be a flashback kind of phenomenon that could be explained?

And I felt it could be.

However, it all the case and then all fell apart with the prosecutor finally he hadn't even talked to the victim, he had misled the victim, he had misled the media, and so the case slowly disintegrated, and it's only been recently, maybe in the last couple of years, where she finally has been able to say how she lied about the whole thing, and that was publicized obviously for that, But that was a case of false accusation, clear and simple.

You write about an offender named Charlie Scott, a very prolific perpetrator, convicted violent serial rapist.

How were you brought on to understand the likelihood that he would reoffend.

Well, it was.

Brought on in the Charlie Scott case with actually with another profiler from the BSU who was going to be talking about Charlie Scott from a different angle.

He's worked before he joined the FBI profiling group, had been to evaluate for court offender, so he had that part to do, and I was going to be talking about from the victim's standpoint.

And this was the case at that time for that trial where Charlie Scott was amazing in terms of an he can call him an escape artist.

He had managed to escape from all these federal jails in very interesting ways.

I think it's in the book.

But at any rate, the one case that I had interviewed the victim didn't come up because they couldn't get her to testify.

It later comes up years later where an outstanding warrant was issued for him, And that's the case that after he has been parolled because of these first infractions where they did have some statement, he is pulled back in and she does testify and now he's in prison again for that particular case.

And I marvel at that, and I think that's so important to understand that the system does work in if you have I guess enough patients.

But it can work, and people are able.

Officers are able to find some of these cases that are years in it over and then still bring them to victim to justice.

And that was a great case for Charlie Scott.

He had originally gotten into the army.

There's a military case into the army by using his sisters a social security number.

I mean, he was just a classic, I guess we would call a classic psychopath that was able to manipulate.

He even became a bounty hunter and I have a video of him arresting someone that he was after.

So he was like a chameleon.

He kept changing things and he had a very creative background, if you will.

But he also had a lot of victims and so we were able to bring justice for the victims.

So that was very very good.

You called him a confidence style offender and you were there to assess his risk for reoffense.

What were some of the reasons you gave for his likelihood of reoffending.

Well, certainly all of his escapes.

You know, he climbed up into the ceiling and came across in the ventilation ceiling in one of the prisons that's how or jails that's how he got out, and also how he some of the things I just said is creative background, but the FBI profile was able to of course give much more substance because he had access to some of the records that I wouldn't necessarily have access to.

You're also right that part of this was the delayed reporting phenomena itself with a confidence style.

Yes, yes, they usually get away with it because they threatened the victim.

I think the victim in this case was threatened with Victims are usually threatened with a couple of things.

One either they're going to be heard or injured or killed or something.

Or they will threaten the family.

And I always found that the threats to the family are very frightening two victims and is a something that the offender capitalizes on.

So the delayed reporting, whatever the reason for the delay, it is used against of course against the victim when it comes to court.

You know, why didn't it take so long?

Why didn't you immediately come forward?

And then the victim is put on the spot with having to explain why, which you're embarrassed.

Was she afraid they wouldn't believe her, et cetera.

So it places more pressure on the victim, and it is one more thing the victim has to go through.

I always marvel that victims have the strength to go through, because the court system for a victim is not easy at all.

You talk about the in the end of this book, the deterioration of trust between the juries and expert witnesses as part of a trend towards broader societal skepticism directed towards expertise in general.

Yes, I think that we have to do a better job, because how can you have an expert on both sides, you know, one taking one position, one taking the other.

And that's where the issue of science comes in.

You can't just say, well, I think that's the reason.

You have to say in cite some kind of research to support your opinion.

So you give a base, you give your opinion, and you have to give the basis, and that's what the jury needs to understand and to go with because a lot of them I remember in the Hazel Thornton saying in the Menendez case, I don't believe any one of the men saying, I don't believe any of these experts.

After all, they're getting paid, And I thought that was always interesting because they're getting paid too to be a juror, so that they don't understand that, yes, they are getting Experts do get paid for their time, not for their opinion.

That's what you want to do.

That if you put time in on a case, that that's what you get paid for, not the outcome of what your opinion is.

What would you attribute this skepticism to something to the expert witness testimony that has been established, with the guidelines that have been established, with all the presidents that have been set, with people like you testifying successfully at trials.

Why the skepticism, Well, I think a skepticism is because there is a belief out there and you can talk to jurors about this that experts will say whatever they to support the side that they're on.

In other words, if someone has uh is a victim, well I believe the victim because i'm you know, I'm testifying on the prosecution side, whereas the other side will say I don't believe the victim, and et cetera.

So the being paid for the side they're on is something that I think durors have picked up because they have they have to in their own mind separate out the experts.

And that's why you have to give your background.

You have to give you why you are an expert, and the judge has to prove it.

Don't forget, the judge roofs the expert, not the other way around.

So there can be situations where you're not accepted as a expert.

I'm sure you could be a fact witness, but not necessarily an expert witness.

You also write about how AI might be used for prevention, investigation, legal proceedings, and possibly rehabilitation to create a more efficient, responsive, and predictive criminal justice system.

How can AI be utilized?

Well, AI, I think is very going to be very important in this and we've already taken a step forward on the use of the drawings that Eric Menendez gave and we've put the information into the algorithm and ask the chat to say, if I want you to look at this as an expert in say mental health, or I've asked you to look at the as an expert in art therapy, and you run them.

We've run them and you get two different answers and different reasons.

And that's what we're going to publish because I think that's very interesting of one way to look at the use of AI.

Now it's only looking at the information you give, and it's only as good as the information you have.

I just think that this is going to be very important.

We could have asked what would you recommend for rehabilitation?

I never thought of that, but maybe after this I will.

And I think that it's going to be very helpful because you can ask chat what your question is and see what they do.

They analyze it in a different way, or do they analyze it in a similar way.

We found that they were too different that Obviously, in the clinical they were much more clinical and understanding of the trauma, whereas in the art therapy it was a little bit different in terms of what their background is on eyes and color and et cetera.

How much headway have you seen with your acceptance of your rape trauma syndrome idea.

Rape trauma syndrome is what we call a nursing diagnosis, and it was a subtype.

Sometimes it's used as a subtype of the larger umbrella called post traumatic stress disorder PTSD because in PTSD you can have a variety of stressful events.

It isn't just rape but it could be combat, it could be experiencing a natural disaster, it could be other kinds of traumatic events.

And so rape trauma we define from the original source.

It's been accepted in the nursing diagnosis and it's now being looked at for international relevance.

And I know that a Brazilian researcher is preparing an article on that and updating.

If you will, do you rape trauma syndrome.

I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about Expert Witness The Weight of Our Testimony When Justice Hangs in the Balance.

I know this book will be released September seconds all over the world on Amazon and everywhere else that people will get their books.

I want to thank you so much for coming on and talking about your book Expert Witness today.

Thank you, Dan.

I'd a pleasure to work with you this South again.

That book is going to be released September second Expert Witness The Weight of Our Testimony When Justice Hangs in the Balance by Ann Burgess.

Thank you so much for this interview and Burgess and you have a great evening and good night.

Thank you Dan, you too, thank you.

Yeah,