Thinking Through a Suspect’s Options

Thinking Through a Suspect’s Options

An investigator I trained a while back reached out to me for advice on a sexual assault case they were prepping — a suspect not yet interviewed, and a decision to make about how to approach it. I won’t get into the specifics because the case is still open. What matters is the act of thinking through things from your suspect’s perspective.

Here’s the exercise I walked through with them, and it’s one I regularly use with students: before you go in, sit down and think through the interview from the other side of the table. Not “is he guilty,” not “what’s my evidence” — those matter too, but first: if he did it, how is he likely to play this conversation?

For a sexual assault suspect, there are usually a handful of lanes he can choose from:

1. Total denial. Never met her. Doesn’t know what you’re talking about.

2. Met her, nothing happened. Acknowledges contact, denies the incident.

3. Something happened, but it was consensual. Admits the encounter, disputes the crime.

4. Full immediate admission. Rare. I’ve seen it my career, but it isn’t common.

As always, I want to point out that some suspects are innocent and it is possible that he denies meeting her or doing things with her because he didn’t do those things!

Every Lane Has a Price

For the guilty suspect, though, each lane has risks.

Total denial is the highest-risk play, whether he realizes it or not. If he tells you he’s never met her and never heard of her, the only way that story survives is if you have literally nothing connecting them. He’s betting the whole hand on your evidence being empty.

Your strategy in this lane is to build his dating and sex life from scratch, then narrow it down until there’s nowhere left to hide. Start broad — is he seeing anyone, what does his dating life generally look like — and work your way toward the window that matters: his connection with the complainant. If he describes someone who’s clearly not your victim, don’t skip past it because “that’s not her.” Dig into it anyway — how the date went, whether you could call that person and what they’d tell you. Then ask what else, and who else, until every date is accounted for and the well runs dry. Only then, if it’s warranted, do you slide a photo across the table — never as your opening move, always after you’ve exhausted everything else — and see which way he splits: does he know her, or does he still say no. Either answer moves you toward presenting evidence, which I discuss in detail in thw pinned post

“I met her, but nothing happened” is where it’s worth thinking through the doors it opens. Once he concedes contact, you don’t have to spend the first hour proving they knew each other — that fight is over before it starts. All that time is now free for the questions that actually matter: how he thinks about consent, how he thinks about women, what he believes he’s entitled to.

If there were multiple dates, expect him to steer you toward whichever encounter with her was least damaging — if there were multiple dates, he’ll lead with the good one and hope you don’t know about the rest. Ask directly: how many dates, why did they stop, who did he tell about her, is this typical for him.

Where they went matters too — people who use dating apps tend to return to the same bars and restaurants, and that pattern can point you toward witnesses who saw pieces of the night.

Then push on the “nothing happened” itself. Did they simply part ways at the bar, or did they go back to a place together and something stalled — and if so, what actually happened, was it disappointing, was there friction.

Look for anything that corroborates his account one way or the other: a follow-up text, a block on the dating app, whether this pattern has come up with him before.

Consider using the If / Then / Therefore method. For example:

IF he met her

THEN he communicated with her someway. He got to the meeting place somehow. He was doing something before. He did something after. He left the meeting place somehow.

THEREFORE how did he communicate with her? Why her? How did that communication go? What do you know about her? Did anybody else see you talking or know about you talking? Are you still in contact with her? If not, why not? How did you get to the meeting place? What car did you drive? What were you doing before? What did you do after? Can anybody else verify that? Did you leave with her? Meet her somewhere else? If not, why not?

All of those questions flow from a single premise: he met her, which he has to admit for this whole path to be opened.

I don’t want to belabor this point, but I’ll say this: I’ve talked about the If / Then / Therefore method for years now, and I’d like to hear from you if you are using it. This is a powerful technique to come up with a lot of questions quickly. You might not ask all of these questions, but it opens up your mind to other possibilities, things you can verify, and it gives you a lot to talk about (a common fear in interviewing is to run out of things to say). I can’t recommend this technique enough

Remember to write down the questions you come up with during these exercises. Thinking about the issues is helpful, but writing it down is a much surer way to remember.

“It happened, but it was consensual” is both the most dangerous for him and the hardest for you to work. Dangerous because he’s now admitted to the physical acts alleged in the crime — the only thing left is one word: consent. Hard for you because consent, after the fact, is difficult to prove or disprove through an interview alone. This is where you start thinking about corroboration outside the room — texts, a call to a friend afterward, a search history — anything that shows what he actually believed, versus what he’s telling you now.

Your strategy here is to spend time talking about how he defines consent. Can it be given early and withdrawn later — and if so, what would make him believe it had been withdrawn? Has anything like that come up before, with her or with anyone else? Ask what he actually thinks the law says, and then push past the textbook answer to what he really believes about it — some people will recite the rule and then tell you, in the next breath, that they think it favors one side unfairly.

Has anyone ever accused him of continuing past what was agreed to? Would an ex-girlfriend, if you called her, say anything like that? And don’t skip the emotional questions — how does it feel to know he’s here because someone says this went past consent? Is it possible, looking back, that he misread her?

Worth remembering: these lanes rarely stay separate once you’re actually in the room. A suspect who opens with total denial may slide into “I met her, nothing happened” the moment you show him you have more than he expected, and from there into “it happened, but it was consensual” once denial stops being tenable. If you’ve thought through all three in advance, you’re ready no matter which door he opens or how many he walks through before the interview ends.

If you have suspect interviews coming up, think about how they might deny involvement. what are their options in your interview? Total denial? Lack of memory? It’s not what it seems? What will you ask them to help prove or disprove their claims?

A Final Lesson

The investigator who called me had already done something right — they’d asked around, gotten a few opinions from a few people. But they were stuck in a loop: ask someone, get an answer, ask someone else, get a different answer, end up more uncertain than when they started.

At some point I said — and I recognize the irony of giving this advice while giving advice — you have to stop collecting opinions and go do the interview. Input is useful. Endless input is a way of avoiding the room. Build your plan, write out questions to address likely branches the interview may go down, know your evidence, get one round of outside input if you need it — then go talk to him. You’ll learn more in the first five minutes across the table than in another week of asking around.

Want to Learn More?

Fundamentals of Interviewing and Interrogation — my full book on ethical, effective suspect interviewing, available now on Amazon in paperback, hardcover, and Kindle. Please leave a review!

Val and I also teach these techniques hands-on through Modern Interviewing Solutions. We’re booking new classes for later this year — if your department or organization is interested in hosting us, reach out through the site.

And keep an eye out: we’re launching a four-part video interviewing course hosted by Scarab, alongside courses from several other excellent presenters in the field. More details to come — stay tuned.