(First published February 2009)

What is so fascinating about the Bruce Mullenix in the video is his body language when he speaks. After Erin Moriarity says Bruce had a “rock solid alibi” the night of the murder, if you only watched Bruce’s body language and tried to discern if he was honest or not here, you would likely conclude Bruce was being deceptive. He shakes his head no when he says yes, and he shrugs his shoulders when he says “Yeah, and I knew that” to Erin Moriarity.

Read moreYet Bruce is NOT lying here. If you thought he was, you’d be clearly mistaken.

The reason I point this out is because there is not one universal clue to deception, and I want people to see this conclusively. Yes, shrugging of the shoulder, or shaking of the head opposite to verbal clues can indicate deception, but when you see it, it doesn’t always mean that someone is being deceptive.

We know that what Bruce is saying here is the truth. The police made him a suspect, their number one suspect at the time, and cleared him. Bruce Mullenix was also out of town when his ex-wife, Barbara, was murdered. And to back it all up, I believed Bruce when I saw him talk. His behaviors were very consistent with what he was saying to me.

Well, how could that be, you ask?

For me, deception detection is not all about the clues. I can’t stress that enough. When I look at a person, I have an immediate sense of their personality. I don’t know if it is facial features, or expressions, but I can usually tell people many facts about a stranger with stunning accuracy, without ever saying a word to them — by simply looking at them, or a photo of them (see what I call paralleling). With that, I listen to what a person says, to see if it matches their personality type, and their typical, expected behavior. That’s how I come to the conclusion whether someone’s behavior is natural and honest, or deceptive, much of the time. The clues only come as supportive evidence for me.

Dr. Maureen O’Sullivan says it best when she says, “They [wizards otherwise known as naturals] seem to have templates of people that they use to make sense of the behavioural deviations they observe… So it is not a set of disembodied cues, but embedded behaviours that are consistent with each other as well as with the kind of person exhibiting them (source).”

So next time you spot a clue to deception, don’t be quick to call someone a liar by one or two clues alone. The process is a lot more complex than what it appears on the surface. I personally recommend focusing on the facts and looking for inconsistencies, first. That will be much more reliable and trustworthy for the average person. Had we done that in this case as well, Bruce would have been cleared quickly, and focus would have fallen where it should, on Rachael Mullenix and Ian Allen.