Forensic Behavioral Sciences

On the night of October 25, 1994, the McCloud family of Union County, South Carolina, answered a loud knocking at their front door. There was Susan Smith, asking for help: “Please call 911 and get the police.” When the police arrived, Susan told the responding officer that at about 9 p.m. she had been idling at a red light at the junction of Highway 49 and Highway 215. While she was awaiting a green light, a black male approached her car on the passenger side, showed a small handgun, and got into her car. He told her to drive north on Highway 49. When they got to J. D. Long Lake, he told her to stop, forced her out of the car, and drove off. He refused to let her get her two young children—Michael and Alexander—out of the car. She went to a nearby home, the McClouds', for help.

There was an immediate and intensive search of the area by air and ground. Police agencies in the state were notified by telephone and teletype of the crime. A police artist was called. He composed a drawing of the abductor, whom Susan Smith said she could identify, and this was given to the media and the police. The next day Susan Smith was interviewed. She restated what she had told police already. Her phone was tapped in the event the perpetrator called her home, and her credit card information was taken by police. Immediately, officers were assigned to record and check on all leads of possible sightings of the missing car and children. Many leads were followed up but to no avail. No trace of the abductor, the car, or the children was found.

This case was atypical in that it immediately received nationwide attention. Television and print media called for help in locating the missing children and the missing car. Susan Smith and her husband appeared on television to beg the abductor to return the children. These efforts produced no new evidence and no solid leads for police. Aside from the nationwide attention, this case was far more typical than is commonly realized. In this case, as in about 70 percent of all cases of serious offenses, there was no physical, scientifically analyzable evidence to enable conventional forensic techniques to be of benefit. That is, neither the alleged perpetrator, the car, the children, nor any other tangible property of interest was available. The police in this case had to rely on techniques that lie in the realm of the behavioral forensic sciences.

Behavioral forensic techniques are typically based on theory and research in the behavioral as opposed to the physical sciences. In many cases these techniques are controversial: Their scientific foundation may be inadequate, the way in which they are typically applied may be at odds with what scientific research supports, and other features of their usage may be problematic. Nevertheless, without the use of these techniques there is little doubt that many more criminal cases would go unsolved and that a great number of criminal investigations would go unprocessed. (On average in the United States, only about 20 percent of all serious criminal cases are “cleared” by the police. That usually means only that an arrest was made; it does not mean a court conviction.) In the Susan Smith case, as in many others of a similar nature, three forensic techniques played a role in arrest and conviction: forensic interrogation, forensic interview, and forensic polygraphy.

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