“He threw great parties and was always a lot of fun.”   “They were great neighbors.  Whenever you needed some help they were right there.”  The biggest party was the Luau theme, then the Western theme party.  “But there was always a stench, which John said was the moisture under the deck.”  These were what the neighbors said about John Wayne Gacy, Jr. as they partied with one of the world’s most notorious serial killers.

In 1974, Dennis Rader, aka the BTK killer, taunted the police in Wichita, Kansas with evidence, copies of letters, clues and puzzles while he was on his 14-year murder spree.  In that same time, he was president of his church, a Boy Scout leader and a city compliance officer.   Some thought he was arrogant and a control freak, but most found him efficient, friendly, and a “regular nice guy.”  He got away with murder because in 1988, after 14 years, the killings stopped and he disappeared, only to reappear in 2004 with more taunts for the police and an encoded message with his name which eventually led to his arrest.  BTK stands for “Bind, Torture and Kill.”

The police were called to Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment to investigate an oriental boy running around buck naked.  Two neighbors had been less than enthusiastic about the stench from his apartment and called the police when they saw something unusual.  When the police met Mr. Dahmer he seemed like a normal homosexual man in a lover’s quarrel.  He said his lover was 19 and was a little drunk.  The cops defended Dahmer to the two neighbors and told the neighbors to leave him alone.  The cops wrote it off as meddling, or perhaps because the neighbors were 18 year old women they were not believable.  They didn’t notice the boy had holes drilled in his head where Jeffrey Dahmer had poured acid to make him walk around like a zombie.  They didn’t notice the 3-day old cadaver of Tony Hughes lying in the bedroom which Dahmer was still having sex with while he ate his body parts.  They never ran Dahmer’s ID and saw that he was a convicted child molester and the oriental boy they met in his apartment was the brother of his first sexual molestation victim.  And they never saw that he killed the boy immediately after they left and had sex with his corpse, and that he was really only 14 years old!  Instead they joked about homosexuals and defended him to the neighbors.  Although not all the neighbors were upset, as most saw Dahmer as a “quiet sensitive guy with a nice smile.”

And it can go on and on.  It seems no matter how heinous the crime, how egregious the personality of the criminal, there are people that will say nice things about them.  There are people that will defend them.  There are people that are shocked when someone accuses them of doing something evil.

Let me tell you this unequivocally, I have yet to see the psychological data on a criminal that I could not predict some danger either from getting blind test results or a face to face interview, even when the testing was before they committed a crime; but, if I were to rely on what other people said about them I would be wrong the majority of the time.  Yet, every time I go into court as an expert witness, I have to defend my position that I don’t count heavily on collateral contacts whether it is a family member, a friend, a teacher or a therapist.

I interviewed a social worker recently on a divorce case who insisted that the father was abusing the children to get back at the mother.  When asked if the she saw any problem with the mother psychologically, she said no.  When asked if she was aware of the multiple psychiatric hospitalization of the mother, she said she was, but they were caused by the father.  When asked why the mother was in the hospital at times when she hadn’t seen the father for months and even years, she said she had been traumatized by the relationship.  When asked if she ever met the father, she said no, but I’d better get the kids away from him and give them to the mother.  I couldn’t resist, I had to ask if she had ever been hospitalized for psychiatric reasons.

People are just blinded by what side of a person they see, and that includes professionals, as well as lay people.  They will report to you that someone is the perfect citizen, perfect partner and perfect parent and it can be about as far from the truth as possible.  You can’t depend on collateral contact, in fact in most cases it will shield you from the truth.

And the research is on my side.  In employment psychology, letters of reference (a version of collateral contacts) are the weakest form of data, in fact so weak it should be completely ignored in a regression equation.  Research on defense mechanisms shows that the most vigorous defense made by people for themselves, by other persons or by attorneys occur in the cases where there is the most guilt.  This is something cops have known for years.   And using collateral source increases the chance that lying, malingering and/or fantasy become a part of your evaluation.  As the old expression goes, if you

want to know the truth about somebody ask their enemies, not their friends.

Taking the case of collateral contacts in custody evaluations as this is the area where it is more hotly contested.  The ethics for psychologists state:

“Psychologists may also attempt to interview extended family members and other individuals when appropriate (e.g., caretakers, grandparents and teachers). If information gathered from a third party is used as a basis for conclusions, psychologists attempt to corroborate it from at least one other source wherever possible. The corroboration should be documented in the report.”

But they also states:

“…if psychologists choose to make dispositional recommendations, the recommendations should be derived from sound psychological data and must be based on considerations of the child's health and welfare in the particular case.”

Given that there is a need to corroborate all material from an outside source, collateral resources becomes only a process of finding more data that fits what you already know.  Further, all recommendations have to be based on psychological data when compared to the research.  There is absolutely no research on the validity of collateral contacts, unless you consider the expansive research that collateral contacts reduce the predictive accuracy of testing and historical data.  Thus no recommendation can follow from a report based on collateral contacts.  Frankly, if you are an attorney and a psychologist on the stand has made numerous collateral contacts of neighbors or family members, sharpen your claws.  You’ve got the basis for throwing a forensic out of court.  Collateral sources bias what a psychologist has to say.  So, focus on it and ride it home. 

What then is the need for a collateral contact…?

If there is a collateral resource that has seen all parties and has remained objective, by all means they are a reasonable collateral resource.  If a party is seeing only the children in a divorce case often times they have seen only one of the parents, their view is not going to be very valid.  If a therapist has seen only the criminal or only the victim in a criminal case, they are not going to be a valid resource.  If they have only seen a patient in therapy in a civil case, they are vulnerable to what is called “counter-transference” which is the principle in psychology where the therapist starts to have feeling toward his client or projects himself in the client’s life situation.  It happens in every relationship and as a person who supervises therapists for years, I don’t worry about it because it is often good to help cure the client.  However, it is bad for a forensic evaluator and bad for the court because it renders a therapist basically useless in court except for factual information.

Collateral resources that are needed to confirm employment or confirm that a child is in daycare are valuable to a psychologist, especially when they are against what the parent has said as far as attendance.

A psychologist may wish to see other members of the family or other persons that may be watching a child in a custody case just to get a quick sense of their sanity.

In a criminal case, a psychologist may wish to interview witnesses or others that were involved in the day of the crime.  The same holds true in civil cases.

Reports from schools are good resources of collateral material.  Hospital notes as well.  There are a few things, but not as many as other would want you to believe.

Talking to multiple source in the client’s community reduces the chances of making a good recommendation.  One attorney in court suggested I should have talked to the soccer coach to support his client’s request for custody – give me a break!  Unless a corner kick is grounds for a custody recommendation, that request is bizarre!

I once worked a case in the Midwest where we were trying to find a serial rapist on a college campus.  He had assaulted at least 10 college girls and the campus was starting to get very testy.  The cops had this guy picked out as a main suspect but couldn’t catch him in the act.  The suspect was a real “prick” and everybody really wanted to bring him down.  All the neighbors hated him, felt he was the rapist, and chided the police for not being able to catch him.  Across the campus was a thirty year old man that was taking classes in-between working a factory job.  He was a walking “smiley face” and the neighbors loved him as did his fellow students who saw him as kind, gentle, likable older guy.  The cops hadn’t identified him at all.  As soon as I saw the first interview with the nasty guy’s neighbor I knew he was not our rapist, even though the neighbors were saying he probably was.  He just didn’t fit the scientific pattern.  Within a half-a-day, my profiling team had picked out the “smiley face” man and he was caught the nest night when followed.  We had applied simple psychological science, and the cops were following what everyone was saying – essentially collateral contacts.  We identified the right guy within a day when we ignored the collateral sources and focused on the data.

But, we never once asked how well the guy played soccer!

Dr. Aumiller is the executive director of the Society for Police and Criminal Psychology, an international network of police and forensic scientists, therapist and researchers.  He consults in the court systems of Long Island and lectures throughout America and Europe.