Her

Summary

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Everything They Missed — Episode 3: “Her” (September 18, 2025)

Host: Stephanie Tinsley
Podcast Context: Investigating the long-cold and deeply flawed case of Danny Harris’s 2007 Memphis murder, this episode traces the overlooked evidence, interrogations, and unlikely confessions that shaped (and plagued) the investigation.

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Episode Overview

Stephanie Tinsley dives into the heart of the Danny Harris case, focusing on the shocking gaps and contradictions in the investigation and prosecution. The episode explores the key players in the aftermath — especially suspects Sarah Lucas and Tammy Vance — while also unraveling the troubling role that false confessions and police interrogation tactics played in both this and other notorious cases. Expert voices and gut-wrenching testimonials shine a harsh light on a justice system prone to closing cases rather than uncovering the truth.

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1. The Hazards of Police Interrogation: Amanda Knox’s Testimony

• Amanda Knox recounts her internationally known ordeal as an example of how deceptive police tactics can ruin lives, regardless of evidence. Speaking before the Washington State Legislature to limit police deception during questioning, she highlights the devastating impact of such practices.

“The worst day of that entire ordeal was the day that I was interrogated overnight by police officers who claimed to have evidence against me…They lied to me. I did not know they could lie to me.”
— Amanda Knox [03:10]

• Stephanie draws a direct line between Knox’s experience and that of Andrew Wayne Hayes (a central suspect in Danny Harris’s case), who confessed under similar “Reid technique” tactics.

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2. Following the Evidence: Sarah Lucas, ATM Cards, and Pawn Shops

Evidence Fails and Overlooked Leads

• Key sequence:
  • Danny Harris’s ATM card was used 82 times in the two weeks following his murder ([07:01]).
  • Sarah Lucas (daughter of Tammy Vance) pawned Harris’s stolen electronics at two Memphis shops within days ([06:02], [08:15]).
  • Sarah denied any connection or knowledge, but her name was on the pawn ticket. Despite this, detectives did not pursue her or related phone/ATM evidence aggressively.

“She’s pawning a dead man’s stuff ... It’s a TV, it’s a VCR, it’s electronic equipment that was stolen from his apartment. So all within days of, you know, immediately after—and then within days of this murder.”
— Jason Gishner, Attorney [08:15]

• Critical error: The stolen checkbook fingerprints were not checked against Sarah until after she fled the state ([13:40]).

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3. Timeline Tangle: Phones, Pacemakers, and Unanswered Calls

• Detailed account of Harris's final hours:
  • His cell phone records and pacemaker logs pinpoint the time of death and link calls made immediately before and after, tightening the timeline ([09:01]–[11:28]).
  • Calls involved Sarah Lucas, Heather (Tammy’s other daughter), and the Megamates chat line used by Tammy for prostitution.
  • Ongoing phone activity weeks after Harris’s death pointed to ongoing cover-ups ([12:27]).

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4. The Anatomy of a False Confession

Expert Perspectives

• Dr. Richard Offshee (false confession/interrogation expert):
  • Explains how suspects like Andrew Hayes get manipulated into confessing through repeated suggestion, threats, and promises ([16:41]–[18:24]).
  • Describes the Reid technique: emotional pressure, deception, promises of leniency/harm, and why such practices risk false confessions.

“They contaminated all those facts by telling him what to say, which they can do when it’s not recorded, but they don’t dare do when it is recorded.”
— Dr. Richard Offshee [18:40]

• Dr. Richard Leo (Psychology/Law):

  • Clarifies that extended interrogations, threats, and failure to record are not officially endorsed even by Reid method standards ([20:48]).
  • Stresses that police officers often discount the reality of false confessions, believing their own gut over evidence ([21:11]).

• David Owens (Murdaugh case lead investigator):

  • Differentiates between interviews and interrogations, criticizing accusatory tactics and unsubstantiated claims about evidence.

“I have been through the training. I wasn’t a fan of it…I never liked the part [of the Reid technique] where you say ‘I’ve got your fingerprints, I know you were there.’”
— David Owens [22:47]

Horrors of the System

• Lack of recording interrogations is the rule, not the exception; even when confessions are made, there’s rarely an audio or video record of how they were produced, leading to wrongful convictions ([27:52]).
• Case parallel: Jason Strong confessed after hours of pressure to a crime he never committed ([27:03]).

“The moment you sign that paper, you’re fucked...Until you’re in that situation, you don’t really know what you would do. You give somebody enough time to work on you—even some of the bravest among us can collapse.”
— Jason Strong [27:03]

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5. Why Don’t Police Record Interrogations?

• Dr. Offshee bluntly states:

“Because they want to be able to do anything that they need to do to get a confession. Because they're more interested in closing the case than they are in making sure that they're not putting away somebody who's innocent. Simple.”
— Dr. Richard Offshee [28:51]

• Systemic barriers:
  • Recording recommendations ignored.
  • Over 20 states, including Tennessee, do not require it ([24:48]).

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6. Revisiting the Suspects: Andrew Hayes, Mental Disability & Polygraph Hope

• Clark Chapman (private investigator) recalls meeting Andrew; his emotional reaction and intellectual disability (IQ of 62, third-grade level) deeply influenced his vulnerability in interrogation ([31:39]–[32:17]).
• Andrew’s desperate faith in a polygraph—the “magic ticket”—shattered when told it couldn’t help due to his mental limitations ([33:44]–[34:16]).
• Chapman describes Andrew’s devastation:

“Andrew thought this was the day—the day he'd finally get his polygraph. But when Clark gently told him it wasn’t happening…it wouldn’t be happening at all. Andrew broke. In his third-grade level mind, this test was the magic ticket…the thing that would prove he was innocent…But instead he collapsed into sobs. 'I’m never getting out,' he told Clark. 'I really don’t have a chance now.'”
— Stephanie Tinsley [34:27]

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7. Tammy Vance’s Pivotal Confession: Guilt & Secrets

• Tammy, already sentenced to life plus 12, breaks down when re-interviewed by Chapman.
  • Claimed neither she nor Andrew were involved in the murder.
  • Suggested she was protecting someone “above” her and had witnessed (but not planned) the murder.
  • Her emotional collapse and refusal to reveal the actual killer suggest unresolved secrets—and the possibility of a larger conspiracy or cover-up ([36:27]–[37:51]).

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• Amanda Knox: “I believe that if I had not been lied to by the police, none of this would have ever happened.” [04:53]
• Stephanie Tinsley: “The circle of suspicion feels pretty small. For me, it comes down to a mother and daughter. But then there are details that just don’t sit right.” [15:29]
• Clark Chapman: “There’s something wrong here. We’re going to get to the bottom of it.” [32:17]
• Tammy Vance (via Chapman): “Andrew had nothing to do with it.” [36:27]

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Timestamps for Critical Segments

• Amanda Knox testimony/interrogation parallel: [01:33] – [05:00]
• ATM, pawn shops, evidence trail: [06:01] – [09:01]
• Timeline/pacemaker/phone calls: [09:01] – [12:27]
• Sarah Lucas fingerprints & flight: [13:15] – [13:46]
• Dr. Offshee on false confession science: [16:41] – [18:40]
• David Owens on police interviews/interrogations: [22:41] – [24:48]
• Case studies: Central Park Five, Jason Strong: [26:38] – [27:52]
• Recording interrogations & systemic critique: [27:52] – [29:07]
• Clark Chapman recounts Andrew’s struggle: [31:39] – [34:27]
• Tammy Vance’s confession & emotional breakdown: [36:27] – [37:51]

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Episode Tone & Takeaways

Direct, relentless, and empathetic—Stephanie maintains a tone of determined skepticism. The episode doesn’t pass easy judgment. Instead, it lays out the devastating consequences of investigative shortcuts, manipulation, and indifference. By combining forensic detail (call logs, evidence trails) with raw, affected human voices, “Her” illustrates how truth can be hidden by those who are supposed to uncover it, and how the cost of mistakes is measured in entire stolen lives.

To follow up:

• Listeners are encouraged to visit everythingtheymiss.com for extended material and contact.
• Next week promises the next piece of the mystery—and perhaps the person Tammy hinted at protecting.

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Transcript

[Stephanie Tinsley]

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[Amanda Knox]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee. For the record, my name is Amanda Knox and I am here in support of this bill. Like Ted, this is really hard.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

After talking with Andrew Hayes, I just couldn't make sense of it. How could anyone confess to a brutal crime they swear they didn't do? Would you? So I couldn't help but wonder if he was telling me the truth because it didn't add up. At least it didn't until I was reminded of this story.

[Amanda Knox]

I was in 2007, when I was 20 years old, I was accused of taking part in the brutal rape and murder of my roommate when I was studying abroad in Italy. I was subjected to 53 hours of questioning over five days in a foreign language without legal counsel.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

This is Amanda Knox in January 2024, speaking at the Washington state legislature. And Amanda, you probably know her name. Her story's been everywhere for years.

[Amanda Knox]

You know, I was in prison for four years. I was on trial for eight. A lot of people think that the worst day of my life was very likely the day that I walked into court and I was convicted as an innocent person who completely had nothing to do with this crime. And I was sentenced to 26 years in prison as a 22 year old. But it was not. The worst day of that entire ordeal was the day that I was interrogated overnight by police officers who claimed to have evidence against me, who claimed that there were witnesses who could place me at the crime scene, that there was evidence of me in the house where my. My roommate was murdered. They lied to me. I did not know they could lie to me.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Amanda Knox was in Olympia testifying in support of House Bill 1062, a proposal to limit the use of deception in police interrogations.

[Amanda Knox]

These were people who I was raised to believe that I could trust, that I should respect, that I should cooperate with. And at no point during my interrogation did I understand the reality of my circumstances. I was not informed that I was a suspect. I was accused of withholding information. And they presented a false reality to me that they knew exactly what happened to my roommate. I started to doubt my very sanity. At no point did I think that I was even making false statements anymore, because this was. I didn't know what was true or false. By the end of my interrogation, I thought I was insane because of how they gaslit me.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Amanda Knox spent four years behind bars in Italy before she was exonerated in 2011. Still, years later, polls show nearly a third of people in the United States and UK believe she's guilty. For me, when you hear her now, hear her voice, she's not fighting for herself anymore. She's fighting for others. And that doesn't sound like guilt.

[Amanda Knox]

I believe that if I had not been lied to by the police, none of this would have ever happened.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

The police tactics Amanda faced are almost exactly like what Andrew Wayne Hayes described to me. But if I was going to take him seriously, if I was even going to consider that he might be telling me the truth, I knew I needed more than his word. That meant looking at how the other side behaved in the interrogation room, and what I found, it wasn't just persuasive. It was dangerous.

[Clark Chapman]

Foreign.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

I'm Stephanie Tinsley, and this is everything they missed. Episode 3 Her so, okay, the day of the murder, phone calls, uses of the ATM card, and then four days later, there's receipts from the pawn shop where Sarah.

[Jason Gishner]

Two different pawn shops.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Two different pawn shops. Tell me what Sarah pawned. And she's pawning a dead man's stuff. I'm back with attorney Jason Gishner, combing through the details in this case. And let me tell you, the deeper you go, the messier it gets. Every piece of evidence just hangs there like it was never fully chased down. And those are the pieces Jason and I are picking up. Now, for starters, we're Able to see that just three days after Danny Harris body was discovered, police subpoenaed his bank records.

[Jason Gishner]

We can also see that people start going to ATM machines and using Mr. Harris ATM card to take money out of the bank.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

But there was no video on the ATM machines.

[Jason Gishner]

Nobody got the video. The ATM card was used dozens of times with within the two weeks following.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

His murder, in total, the card was swiped 82 times.

[Jason Gishner]

Within hours of him being killed, that ATM card is being used around Memphis.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

The ATM card leaves us with two options. Either Danny Harris was murdered, then somehow came back to life and spent the night pulling cash from ATMs across Cordova, or more likely, it was someone else. And logically, that someone is a person connected his killing. What makes this even more peculiar is the next discovery.

[Jason Gishner]

The ATM card is being used at an ATM machine on the very same street that four days later, Sarah Lucas turns up to pawn the victim's stolen property.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Sarah Lucas, as we know, is Tammy Vance's daughter. You heard parts of her interview with police in the last episode. She denied knowing anything about the pawned items, and with no reason to push further, detectives let her go. But what I've learned since, that on the very same day, police followed up with the pawn shop, they found a ticket in Sarah's name, the item Danny's missing. Tv.

[Jason Gishner]

So she's pawning stolen property from the apartment at two different places. It's a tv, it's a vcr, it's electronic equipment that was stolen from his apartment. So all within days of, you know, immediately after, and then within days of this murder. Sarah's Pawnee has stolen property.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

You think this is the kind of detail that should have blown the story wide open. Instead, it was barely a ripple then.

[Jason Gishner]

What we're talking now is late August 2007. And then more things start to build up. They're driving around in his stolen truck. Eventually, when the police are onto them and they find more of his stolen property in the truck.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Inside the truck, detectives found Danny's checkbook. They ran the fingerprints against a few people connected to the case. None matched. But what they didn't do, and this part matters, was run it against Sarah. Another item they collected from Danny's truck was his cell phone. And with it, they recovered his call log. A minute by minute record of who he spoke to and when. Here is how it plays out. The morning of the murder. At 7:35am there's an outgoing call to Telemates, aka Megamates, the chat line that Tammy used for prostitution. Two minutes later, a call to Sarah's cell phone. And then a series of calls back and forth with a man named Patrick Love. And several more calls to telemates. The last significant call comes in from Patrick at 9:31am but here's where it gets strange. I also have Danny's pacemaker records. At 10:05am, his pacemaker detects an abnormal rhythm and shocks his heart. 24 minutes later, his heart spikes to 289 beats a minute, three times normal, and his pacemaker shocks him again. Seven minutes after that, he flatlines, which means as Danny was being beaten to death, his pacemaker was firing, desperately trying to keep him alive. All of this is important because when you line up that time of death against the call logs, things get interesting.

[Jason Gishner]

We know for a fact that Danny Harris's cell phone is at that same location the morning of his murder. And even though Mr. Harris body isn't found for months after he's killed, what we can see is at the time when the pacemaker shuts down, which is the time of death. And within 20 minutes of that, his cell phone starts making phone calls.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

The first call comes in from Sarah's phone right after Danny's phone calls it back. Then Danny's phone makes a series of calls to Tammy vance's daughter, Heather. Five in total, all at 11:02am Four of those calls cut off in under a minute, and the last one lasts five minutes.

[Jason Gishner]

And this is all happening directly in the apartment where this man has been killed.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

The next calls don't appear until that evening. Around 6:30pm, there's an incoming call from an unknown number. By 10pm, there's a call to Sarah's cell phone, followed by three more incoming from the unknown number, each lasting between two and seven minutes. I'd love to find out what those conversations were about. But Heather has since passed. And Sarah, she's been tough to track down. I've been told she possibly shared her phone with her boyfriend, Miguel Famont, but he's been just as difficult to find.

[Jason Gishner]

We had a contact number for him through a brother. We tried to reach out, but we couldn't get him on the phone. But he lives in a small town in Mexico that is basically run by a cartel. Most investigators I have spoken with are unwilling to go down there because it's.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

So dangerous, even without their testimonies. What's strange is that Danny's phone didn't stop for weeks. It kept dialing out, mostly to Heather, Sarah, Lucas and Megamates. To me, it all points to Tammy Reaching out to her daughter in the chat line she was known to use for prostitution. But then on November 2, investigators make some choices and discoveries that throw everything back into question. Detectives realize they hadn't been told the truth. And they bring Sarah back in. This time she admits to pawning the items and but says she only did it because her mother told her to. And instead of digging deeper and into the ATM withdrawals, the phone calls, the holes in her story, they take it at face value. And just like that, she walks out.

[Jason Gishner]

The door and she flees the state and never comes back.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Here's what I can't put together. Seven hours after Sarah's second interview, police suddenly changed course. Maybe they felt momentum slipping. Maybe they realized they'd blown it. But they finally test the checkbook against Sarah's fingerprints.

[Jason Gishner]

Sarah Lucas fingerprint is on the victim's stolen check that was found in his stolen truck.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

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[Amanda Knox]

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[Stephanie Tinsley]

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[Jason Gishner]

In 1988, a small new Jersey town is shaken by horror. A devoted mother murdered, satanic symbols scattered throughout her home. And her teenage son vanished without a trace.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Was this a demonic ritual or a calculated act of evil?

[Jason Gishner]

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[Stephanie Tinsley]

Is this a good time to talk for a minute? I won't keep you long.

[Dr. Richard Offshee]

Yeah, hang on one second. Carrie, do you have any idea where I left my glasses this time? Oh, no wonder my wife had to tell me I left them on my face. You know it's true.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Looking at this evidence, the circle of suspicion feels pretty small. For me, it comes down to a mother and daughter. But then there are details that just don't sit right. Like The TV somehow carried out of Danny's apartment. And forgive me, but we're talking about two women who weren't exactly in peak physical shape. I'm not saying it's impossible, but I'm skeptical. And then there's the confession from a man who seemed to fold way too easily with no real evidence tying him to the crime. And it brought me back to that question. I started with, why would Andrew Wayne Hayes confess at all?

[Dr. Richard Offshee]

From my perspective, the fact that he held out for 27 hours and didn't confess during that period is really very impressive because it shows that he had a real commitment to. I didn't do this.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

To try to understand how anyone could confess to a violent crime they didn't commit, I reached out to Dr. Richard Offshee, one of the country's leading experts on false confessions and police interrogations.

[Dr. Richard Offshee]

Add to that the fact that they get stories from him that don't match the facts of the crime. That's also evidence that he's just being manipulated by these interrogators, because usually what the interrogator does is define what I refer to as a confession narrative. In other words, a story of the crime. And the interrogator typically will define a confession narrative. And then start suggesting over and over again that if you just tell this story, everything's going to go well for you relative to what happens if you continue to say, I didn't do it.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

The deeper I dug, the more a pattern emerged in police interrogations. Again and again. I saw the name of one method show up. It's called the Reed technique. And having written the definitive paper on it, Dr. Offshie was the perfect person to ask.

[Dr. Richard Offshee]

John Reed was a lawyer who started a law practice that failed, then became a Chicago beat cop, and then went to work at this laboratory as a calligrapher. Reid eventually wrote a series of textbooks that underlie the Reid interrogation method. What the Reid interrogation method does is substitute promises of leniency and threats of harm for fists and batons and other implements of torture.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Like in Andrew's case, it was promises to go home or promises never to go home. It was. You know, I spoke with Andrew recently, and he said it just got to the point where he was so delirious, he said, tell me what you want me to say, but realize what you're.

[Dr. Richard Offshee]

Saying at that point is they had already made all the suggestions. He tried desperately to continue to tell the truth. The truth being, I didn't have anything to do with this. But there came a point at which he broke and decided to tell the story, and then they worked on him to diminish the difference between the story that gets told and. And the objective facts of the case. They contaminated all of those facts by telling him what to say, which they can do when it's not recorded, but they don't dare do when it is recorded. Normally, when I analyze an interrogation, a recorded interrogation, what I need to do is go back through the transcript and identify every fact that has been contaminated because it was first brought up by the police and look at only those things that are volunteered by the suspect. If you look at the things that are volunteered by the suspect, the probability of those volunteered statements matching the objectively knowable facts of the crime is very, very small.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

I didn't stop at one scholar. I went all in. I spent two months studying living and breathing police interrogation techniques, trying to understand how they work and why false confessions happen.

[David Owens]

This has all the hallmarks of a false confession, all of them, and none of the hallmarks of a true confession.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Trying to understand what the Reid technique was and what it wasn't and whether it might have been misused. In Andrew's case, I spoke with Dr. Richard Leo, a University of San Francisco professor of psychology and law. As he explained, once it's misused, it isn't the official Reid method at all, just an unrecognized form of interrogation.

[David Owens]

So the Reid people would say that they make clear you shouldn't interrogate more than three to four hours. And this went 27. So that violates the Reid method. And they explicitly and repeatedly say, don't ever threaten somebody. And so they would say, that's not the Reid method.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

So in your experience, how are officers trained?

[David Owens]

First of all, police are rarely trained in false confessions. Now, the Reed manual has a chapter on it going back to their 2001 edition. So they would say, well, you know, we trained them on it. But researchers who've gone to the Reed school say, not really. I've never, you know, met police officers who think that false confessions are a problem. They always deny that they've listened to any, and they think that they're just, you know, rare once in a blue moon type events. So that's number one. And then number two, even when they're. The confession contradicts the physical and other evidence. Oftentimes, police, you know, they just believe their gut. They become so invested in the belief that the person is guilty that they rationalize evidence away. In my opinion, the gold standard is not the Reid method. The gold standard would be the method that's most likely to get the truth or the practice that's most likely to get truthful, voluntary information. And at least in the scholarship, there's a consensus that aspects of the Reed method, some of their techniques, are risk factors for false confession.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

I didn't stop with academics. I wanted to hear from the other side, too, how an officer of the law feels about interrogation methods like Reid.

[David Owens]

It's highly suggested that law enforcement go through the Reed technique. I don't think it's pushed as much now as it was a couple years ago.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

So I was introduced to David Owens, the former lead investigator on the Murdaugh murders.

[David Owens]

I have been through the training. I wasn't a fan of it. There is a difference between an actual interview and interrogation. So you can sit down and interview somebody. They have the freedom to leave. They have the freedom not to respond. Interrogation is more so accusatory. You did it. Tell me why. Tell me why you did it. I have all this that proves that you did it. Now tell me why you did it. And they come up with false evidence. I've got your DNA. I've got your fingerprints. I know you were there. Well, first of all, nowadays I don't want to look at somebody and say, I know you were there. I've got your fingerprints. When he sit there saying, no, you don't, because I was wearing gloves. But he's not going to tell me that. So the accusatory I've got evidence that puts you there. I never liked that part. Because they're gonna know you're full of crap, and they're gonna lead you down the wrong road type deal. So that's why I was not big on the Reid technique. I do like the part where they teach in the Reid technique. It's like, let's say, a murder, for instance. You killed this woman. She was a mother. You've got a mother. Don't you love your mother? Do you want to grow up without your mother? Now these people have to grow up without their mother. So you get more emotionally involved in talking to that suspect or that defendant and touching them, making it more personal. So I like that aspect of it, being more intimate with the person. But I am curious why they wouldn't take interrogations.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

And so that's one question I want to ask you.

[David Owens]

Is, is that common?

[Stephanie Tinsley]

And if not, why?

[David Owens]

I don't know why. Nowadays they have policies, or even 10 years ago, 15 years ago, where they had policies not to record me personally. I'd have one. If you're able to record it. It's recommended that you do.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

It's worth noting Reid's own guidance actually encouraged recording. In 2007, he wrote that investigators should capture everything because if they only recorded the confession, a jury could assume the rest was too damaging to be heard. Yet in nearly every false confession case I studied, that's exactly what happened. Interrogations weren't recorded, and Tennessee isn't unusual. More than 20 states don't require it.

[Dr. Richard Offshee]

Illinois was the first state to require police officers, by statute, to record interrogations in homicide cases.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

This is Steve Drezan, a Northwestern law professor and attorney you might know from the Netflix documentary Making a Murderer. He spent his career fighting wrongful convictions.

[Dr. Richard Offshee]

That process took years to get to a place where police had no choice but to record. We have seen less false confessions. The courts are used to the fact that police officers are allowed to deceive suspects, and I think it has curbed the worst kinds of abuses. The death threats, the, you know, the.

[David Owens]

Promises that you can go home.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

I've been finding the worst false confession stories often involve young people who had no physical evidence tying them to the crime. And yet, after being held for hours or days under intense pressure, eventually they confessed for something they had no prior awareness of.

[David Owens]

So you get to a point where you. You feel like you have no other option but to just give them what they want to make it stop.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

We've all heard these stories, like the Central park five or West Memphis. Three kids tormented and coerced into giving false confessions. And other than Andrew Hayes, I wanted to hear directly from someone who had lived through that hell. That's when I found Jason Strong, an ordinary guy from Illinois who, after hours of questioning, confessed to killing a woman he'd never met.

[David Owens]

Mistake number one that most innocent people make is you didn't do anything wrong, so you want to cooperate. But the moment you sign that paper, you're fucked. Because then when I asked for an attorney, they said, well, you can't have an attorney. You can't afford one. You've destroyed your rights, you know, or at least they make you feel like you can't, you know, redeem them. And so you're. You kind of feel like you're in a place that you can't get out of, and nobody will come to help you. Once it's to that point, you're already so wrecked that you're not even thinking clearly about, well, what can I reasonably do in this situation? You know? And everybody says I'd never confess to something I didn't do. Well, until you're in that situation, you don't really know what you're. What you would do. You give somebody enough time to work on you. Even some of the bravest among us can collapse.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Pressure was one thing, but the other problem kept circling back, the one I'd already seen again and again. And it got under my skin. Jason's interrogation, like Andrew's, wasn't recorded. I couldn't even wrap my head around it. How was this possible? The technology isn't new. It isn't expensive. Even a cheap tape recorder could do it. And shouldn't we want that? If someone confesses to a murder, shouldn't there be a record of how they got there? Not just the end result, but the road that led to it. Without it, all you have is a signed piece of paper and the word of the detective who wrote it. And it baffled me. And I had to go back to Dr. Richard Offshee to get his take. Why do you think that the Memphis Police Department, or any police department, why do you think they wouldn't record interrogations?

[Dr. Richard Offshee]

Because they want to be able to do anything that they need to do to get a confession. Because they're more interested in closing the case than they are in making sure that they're not putting away somebody who's innocent. Simple.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

That answer stuck with me. It made me sick. It shouldn't be that simple. But the reason it hit so hard was because it bled straight into my next interview. One that didn't just raise questions. It held answers if I was willing to believe them. When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at WhatsApp.com.

[Amanda Knox]

This episode is.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

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[Clark Chapman]

Hey, Stephanie. How are you?

[Stephanie Tinsley]

I'm good.

[Clark Chapman]

Yeah. Well, I was just thinking about it, you know, as I recall, I think she was about right.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

At 50 years old, Clark Chapman, the private investigator you've been hearing from these last two episodes, came onto the case about two years after Andrew was arrested. Andrew's defense attorney brought him into prep for trial. It took time for Clark to really open up to me, to share what he had found in those early days and what he came to believe. Because for him, it started a lot like it did for me, asking himself if Andrew's story could really be trusted.

[Clark Chapman]

So, you know, when I went down to interview him, he's an extremely nice guy. But you know, I had noticed also in the discovery they had mentioned that he was, he was a little bit slow mentally. And so when I first sat down and started talking to him, that's the first thing I started doing. Going about his background and, you know, learned that he started receiving SSI when he was about 12 years old.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Clark eventually learned from Andrew's mom that at 12, he, he was tested with an IQ of 62, about the level of a third grader. It explained his struggles with memory, understanding, reasoning. He'd been on disability ever since.

[Clark Chapman]

When I, when I started talking to him, like, you know, he just got so emotional, you know, and just crying and he was so convincing. I'm like, I was sitting there thinking like, if you've interviewed so many people in the thousands of people, you know, I've sit across the table from, it's only a few people. You'll just know when you, when they're telling you the truth. Like you just, you just can't make it up. It's just, it's just so real. And he said, I kept telling them I didn't do it, but they didn't want to hear that. He said, I just, I figured it the next day or the day after somebody was going to figure out that I didn't do this. And a lot of stuff that he was saying was lining up, you know, and it started making me think, I'm not sure if this guy really did do this, you know. And I know the second or third time I went back to him and I was like, there's something wrong here. We're going to get to the bottom of it. He was asking, what are we going to do? Like, what are you going to do? He's like, I'll do whatever. I said, I know you will. I said, I believe in you. And he was crying, you know, like, thankfully somebody's listening to him, you know, I said, I'd love to see you take a polygraph test.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

The polygraph wasn't admissible in court, but it could still be used as leverage. But Andrew didn't even know what a polygraph was, so Clark had to explain it to.

[Clark Chapman]

It just. It just broke him down at that point. Like, he was like, that's it. He's like, yeah, I want to do it. Like, he just almost screamed out like he was trying to struggle, you know, and that his voice was breaking up, you know, and he said, please see if you can give me that polygraph test.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

So the polygraph cost $600. Many the Hayes family didn't have. So Clark reached out to the polygraph examiner to see if they could negotiate a deal.

[Clark Chapman]

And I told him, you know, situation about Andrew and about him receiving SSI since he was 12. And at that point, it was just immediate. Like, he said, no. He said, we can't do this. I would never put somebody through that's has that mental issues like that. It's too risky.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

There was concern Andrew might not even understand the questions, which would make the results useless.

[Clark Chapman]

I was like, oh, man, you know, I hate to go back and tell Andrew, you know.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Clark told me the story the first day we met over coffee at a Starbucks in Memphis. He got really quiet and choked up. He told me he remembered walking into the prison and how Andrew lit up. Andrew thought this was the day, the day he'd finally get his polygraph. But when Clark gently told him it wasn't happening, it wouldn't be happening at all. Andrew broke. In his third grade level mind, this test was the magic ticket, the thing that would prove he was innocent, undo all this mess and send him home. But instead, he collapsed into sobs. I'm never getting out, he told Clark. I really don't have a chance now. And the hardest part, he might have been right, because Andrew's defense was out of move, except one. And it meant putting their last hope in the hands of someone completely unpredictable.

[Clark Chapman]

It was actually three times that I went to see her. And one of the key reasons was we knew that she held all the cards because she had already pled.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

Tammy Vance never went to trial. Instead, she agreed to plead guilty to the maximum sentence on one condition, that Andrew Hayes be severed from the case on January 30, 2009. That's exactly what she did.

[Clark Chapman]

You know, the most odd thing that we thought in this whole thing was, you know, why would she plead to life plus 12? That's. That's the worst she could have got if she went to trial and lost. She had to know something if she would, if she was going to plead to something like that. Drove up to Nashville to the women's prison. It's a very large facility. They had a room for us that I was able to go in, and a large room there with Tammy. And there was.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

On that first visit, in the thick Tennessee July heat, Clark told Tammy the truth. Andrew was never out of the case. He was still sitting in prison. And whether she meant to or not, she helped put him there.

[Clark Chapman]

I told her, you know, if Andrew is guilty, you know, then, you know, he needs to do his time in jail. But, you know, I don't want to see anybody, you know, go to jail for. For something they didn't do if they didn't commit the crime. And that's when Tammy broke down. I mean, she just started crying profusely and started taking deep breaths and just seemed to come overwhelmed with emotions and uncontrollable tears. It was bad. It really was. It was. You could see the. The hurt from something. I thought, you know, just tell me the truth. And she said, I can't, you know, and she continued to try cry, you know, excessively, and she just said, Andrew had nothing to do with it. And I knew she had something to tell. And she again said she herself nor Andrew had anything to do with it. So I asked her, you know, if you had nothing to do with the murder, you know, why do you accept the plea agreement? She said I had to do it. And I said, well, you know, was there someone else above that she was protecting? And she said, yes. And I asked her, you know, did she witness the murder? She said, yes. And I asked, you know, was the murder plan? And she was like, oh, God, no. You know, no, you know, she, you know, again, just broke down and. And I don't know if I've ever seen, you know, an inmate or someone cry that much. Just. I was just trying to get it out of her who it was me.

[Stephanie Tinsley]

What, you know, what she said. Next would rewrite the story of Danny Harris's murder. Thank you for listening to everything they missed. If you want more before next week's episode. Follow me on social media he Stephanie Tinsley for extended interviews and deeper details into the story. And visit us anytime@everythingthey miss.com to see photos, videos or leave a voice message for me on our tip line if you think you have information to help this case. Also, don't forget to follow, rate and review this show. It helps more than you know.