Okay, Ward Weaver's story was on the front page of The Oregonian today.  And again, it was mentioned that he failed badly on his polygraph test adminstered by the FBI.  And again, no mention of these other poor innocent suspects, men that lived in the neighborhood who were given a polygraph test and were told that they indicated deception in the case of the two missing teenage girls.  I would love for a journalist to track down these men who indicated deception in their polygraphs-- even when they were being truthful.  I would love to hear their story.  What has their life been like since they took the polygraph test? Have they been harrassed?  Have their friends and loved ones treated them any differently?  Any opinions?   

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Any chance his actual charts would be made available to him?  It would be nice for the taxpaying public to verify that "Quality Control" is doing its job correctly.

Skeptic

Note that it is the FBI that conducted polygraph examinations in the case of the two long missing (and now, presumably murdered) girls, Ashley Pond and Miranda Gaddis of Oregon City, OR, whose remains were recently found on Ward Weaver's premises.

With regard to the FBI's use of the polygraph in this investigation, see the 13 July 2002 article, "FBI searches complex where 2 girls disappeared" by Associated Press writer Andrew Kramer.

The FBI polygraphed a neighbor of the girls named Adam Abrams and told him that he had failed.

But after polygraphing a search organizer named Billy Crabtree, the Bureau reportedly told him that they were "withholding the results until the investigation is complete."

Broken,

You ask if several suspects are polygraphed regarding a crime and all are found to be deceptive on a polygraph exam, what are we to think?  In theory, (1) all may be guilty (all true positive polygraph results, (2) all may be innocent (all false positive results), or (3) one or some subset of the total may be guilty (leaving those to be true positive results and the balance to be false positive results).  I believe what you would really like commentary on though is if the current prime suspect is guilty and all others are innocent, what are we to think of a situation in which all are polygraphed and all are to be found deceptive.  

I believe with a control question test polygraph exam this is par for the course.  In general, the public and polygraph examiners themselves are largely blind to their own errors (they tend not to believe or to dismiss denials from innocent suspects who have been found deceptive on a polygraph exam and in general do not receive much feedback regarding their errors).  There are two types of exception to this largely unrevealed and blind error. They are when (1) a person is found to be deceptive, that person denies his involvement, and a different individual subsequently confesses (with corroboration) to the investigated crime, and (2) a situation in which numerous people are polygraphed who might have had sufficient access to commit the crime, many or all are found to be deceptive, but they are unlikely to have all committed the crime.  

This latter sort of revelation has frequently happened with a scenario in which all of a bank's tellers being polygraphed in regard to a bank burglary or all of an armored car company's employees being polygraphed regarding an armored car robbery are each found to be deceptive.  Although I did not participate in the investigation nor conduct any of the polygraph exams given, I was made aware of a similar situation in which a large number of individuals were polygraphed regarding the murder of an FBI agent.  Again a control question test produced what later turned out to be numerous false positive results; as I recall, the matter was ultimately resolved using a concealed information test.  The reason to suspect the initial CQT exam results to begin with was that there was no plausible reason to expect everybody to be guilty or complicit in the crime.  Why do these sorts of false positive results occur, only to be realized within these narrow circumstances?  Again, I believe it is due to fear of consequences (of being found deceptive—not a fear of being caught in a lie) and the obvious connection between those consequences to answers to the equally obvious relevant issues/questions (burglary, robbery, and murder, respectively).  I suspect if the scenario I believe you to be asking about is the one which actually occurred, this later (of two explanations) may well be the source of the revelation and fear of consequences may be the mechanism for any false positive results that may have transpired with the polygraph exams.  Again, because all of the facts are not publicly known (or at least known to me) it is hard to do anything but speculate at this point regarding the specific case you refer to.

Regards,

Drew Richardson

Has anyone heard about the suspect that they have in the case of the 2 missing Oregon girls?  Apparently, this suspect had been on the media telling people he was being harrassed because when they gave him the polygraph, the authorities told him he was showing deception.  Now, months after the polygraph, they find the remains on the property where he is living.  But what they don't say is that there were several other men who lived in the area that were given polygraph tests.  And they told several of them that they were also suspects and were showing deception.  Does anyone know any more detail about this?  Any opinions?