Prominent Attorney Disappears
TOLEDO, OH, Dec. 14, 2007 – On December 5, prominent Toledo attorney and former city councilwoman Karyn McConnell Hancock disappeared. Fearing the worst, her husband, Bishop Lawrence Hancock, and her father Municipal Court Judge C. Allen McConnell, made appearances on national television to plead for her safe return. Her family and friends held prayer vigils. The FBI was called in. Mrs. McConnell-Hancock was found Saturday about fourteen miles northwest of Atlanta near the Six Flags amusement park where she flagged down a construction worker. The construction worker stated that Mrs. McConnell-Hancock was crying and asked him to call 911. When being questioned back in Toledo by police, Mrs. McConnell-Hancock stuck to her story of being kidnapped by three individuals at gunpoint in downtown Toledo. About halfway through the interrogation Mrs. McConnell-Hancock was offered a CVSA exam and she agreed to take it. The CVSA exam, conducted by Detective John Gast, showed clear deception and after being confronted with the charts, she subsequently confessed that she had fabricated the story because she was “tired and needed to get away.” Stated Toledo Police Chief Navarre “That test showed deception.” This scenario is quietly being repeated day-after-day throughout the US in law enforcement agencies as small agencies as the Noesho P.D. (MO) and as large as the California Highway Patrol and the FBI in cases involving murder, rape, child molestation, thefts and employment screening. The Computer Voice Stress Analyzer™ (CVSA®) is a voice-based investigative truth verification tool which is now used by more than 1,700 law enforcement agencies. Even though more than 1,700 law enforcement agencies utilize the system, including most major metropolitan agencies and the US military’s Special Operations Forces; the CVSA is not well known outside of the law enforcement community. Like the polygraph, results of the CVSA are not normally used in court, but rather as a guide to help eliminate individuals as suspects. A recent Department of Defense survey of law enforcement users of the CVSA reported that 86% found the CVSA to be either “very” or “extremely” accurate. The DoD survey also found that 75% of deceptive results were validated by obtaining a confession with “a very small error rate” utilizing the CVSA. The US Patent Office recently awarded Charles Humble, the founder of the National Institute for Truth Verification (NITV), which manufactures the CVSA, a patent on a prior automated scoring algorithm for use on the CVSA. Humble was the first to quantify voice patterns and also discovered delayed stress reaction in voice stress analysis. The CVSA II’s current scoring algorithm, known as the Final Analysis Confirmation Tool® (FACT®), uses advanced mathematical algorithms and a built-in learning feature to recognize, evaluate, categorize and quantify the output from the CVSA. The widely acclaimed CVSA II accurately scores each voice pattern for stress levels and then evaluates the entire examination to render a ‘No Deception Indicated’ or ‘Deception Indicated’ result, eliminating possible bias from the exam. Since the release of the CVSA II in early 2007, over 650 CVSA II’s have been delivered. “From the Atlanta P.D. to the Nashville P.D. to the St. Louis P.D., this is an investigative tool that has proven itself as invaluable in the field” stated John Slater, a former Captain with the White Co. Sheriff’s Dept. (AR) and current Coordinator of Law Enforcement and Training for the NITV. Once restricted for sale only to law enforcement, the CVSA is now available for some commercial applications.
Although widely acclaimed in the law enforcement community, the CVSA is regarded as a threat by the entrenched polygraph establishment as it displaces both them and their technology. Despite this heavy resistance, the CVSA has built an impressive 20-year track record as an investigative tool helping to solve tens of thousands of crimes and helping many innocent people along the way. To see more cases like the Rowan Ford case, go to NITV1.com and click on Real Cases Solved.
The NITV, established in 1988, is located in West Palm Beach, FL, and is the acknowledged world-leader in truth verification technologies and training.
If you would like more information on the NITV, the CVSA II or the NITV’s widely acclaimed training program, call 561-798-6280, go to NITV1.com, or email to nitv@cvsa1.com.