CNN is reporting that the remains found on the Des Plaines River last week are not those of Stacy Peterson or Lisa Stebic. Instead they are the remains of an unidentified male. You can read more here.
Thanks, Jacqueline, for the update to the story.
Question for you: Do you want me to cover stories like this? Let me know by either a comment or by a rating. Thanks!
There is new video of Ronald Cummings at www.FindHaleighNow.com. It is obvious Ronald is reading from a teleprompter (or some other medium).
As the video launches, Ron gives us a fake smile (I suspect as a result of being asked to do so), but then, before and after his emotional pause, there is a genuine glow underneath it all that he cannot conceal.
Even with coaching, you still can’t hide the truth. I personally believe when people are coached, it only exasperates the inconsistencies even more. Coaching only adds to a person’s overburdened cognitive load, if they are lying.
To read all of my opinions on this case, click on the labels below.
Thanks, TJ, for the story lead.
Modified 5-16-2009
Read moreMany of you said you were going to watch the McCanns on Oprah this week. I watched it with the saddest of heart, yet an open mind, just in case I have missed something in the past. I have always believed the McCanns were honest, and after watching this interview, I still feel strongly that they are not involved in their daughter’s disappearance.
I was fascinated to watch Gerry talk about what I have said as well, “How do you prove a negative?” How do the McCanns prove they are innocent? It’s one of the biggest challenges honest people face who are falsely accused.
If we speculate that the McCanns did, in fact, harm and kill their daughter, they would have to lie from the first day she disappeared until today. The cognitive load they would be under would be huge, if they are lying, because every natural thought they had, every word they spoke and every emotion they felt would have to be censored before they expressed themselves. That means they couldn’t talk from their heart or gut, because if they did, they risked exposing their lies.
With that, we would likely see one or both of them have guilt for what they did or allowed to happen, which would appear at times when we wouldn’t expect to see it. We’d also likely see fear that they might be discovered or expose their lies. More than that, we would expect to see stress as carrying that cognitive load would be exhausting and easy to mess up. Imagine, one mistake and the lie is over, and one or both of them would go to prison for life. Their other children would be abandoned to grow up without parents.
If you imagine the intensity these two people would be under to conceal such a lie, you would quickly realize that doing media interviews, like the McCanns did, after Madeleine disappeared, would be the last thing anyone would want to do. Liars typically don’t draw attention to themselves unless they feel arrogant enough that they can dupe the world. The McCanns do not show any arrogance. The type of person who comes to mind with this arrogance is Drew Peterson. Peterson and the McCanns are light-years away from each other.
Logically, it is inconsistent for the whopping majority of the people who are lying to create a worldwide media stir because that would only intensify the pressure on themselves to maintain the lie. If anything, most people would avoid the media and privately seclude themselves if they were lying, but the McCanns did anything but that. They worked tirelessly to get keep Madeleine’s name in the media’s spotlight worldwide and did many interviews with the media–even after they were called “arguidos”, which would be the pinnacle of stress, if you are deceptive, and hiding a secret of this magnitude.
If you watch the McCanns speak in this interview, they speak from their hearts. They speak from their guts. They don’t give any indications that they are self-censoring. They don’t stammer and struggle for words, hesitate, or say nonsensical things. They don’t get their word tense mixed up, they don’t show a hint of being afraid or stressed out. They are not and have not been arrogant (confident yes, arrogant no). Their emotions match what they are saying, and their facial expressions down to every single tick are consistent with their words. This is very hard to do when one is lying–especially about something as painful as this.
The McCann’s also express genuine hope, at times, which would be inconsistent with a lie.
And even more important, they give us supporting stories, which precisely fit the scenario of truth they are telling us, which would be exceptionally rare for liars to do, and even harder to accomplish if they were making up a story of their innocence.
Set your DVRs for Oprah tomorrow. She interviews the McCanns in their first ever American interview. Oprah says on Twitter, “My heart broke for them.”
See a preview here.
Check back this week for my thoughts, or click on the labels below to see all the posts I have written about the McCanns.
On Wednesday, Drew Peterson took to the airwaves again, and it was too much for Stacy’s sister, Cassandra Cales, to bear. She called in, unannounced, and shared her feelings with Drew. The audio segment is raw and painful, and the audio noise in the background makes listening to the conversation flat out eerie. You can’t help but feel for a family who has been torn apart by the devastating and suspicious death of their loved one.
What also caught my eye when I was at the Chicago Sun-Times was an image of Stacy and her sister, with Stacy only wearing an overcoat (and nothing else), and her sister, Cassandra, wearing Drew’s SWAT team uniform and holding a huge machine gun. Click to see the photo.
Does it surprise you?
