EvGavrilov/Shutterstock The deaths of Epsom College Head Emma Pattison and her daughter Lettie are a possible example of the rare and tragic phenomenon of murder-suicide. Pattison’s husband is believed to have shot his wife and child before taking his own life. We asked Sandra Flynn, an expert in forensic mental health at the University of Manchester, about why people commit this horrific act and what we should understand about it. What kind of motivation can be behind these acts? As with other forms of murder, the motivations for murder-suicide (which academic researchers refer to as homicide ..read more

Four-year-old Cleo Smith was found by Western Australian police earlier this week, 18 days after going missing from a remote campsite. Being taken and removed from one’s family is a significantly traumatic event for any child. It disrupts their entire world. Children are dependent on their families and attachment figures for their sense of security and support. Sudden loss of these important relationships can result in fear, a sense of abandonment and confusion. Children left alone can become withdrawn and depressed and have little understanding of why this has happened to them. There can be l ..read more

Police will interview suspects following the murder of Drummer Lee Rigby but how they do it is important. PA/Dominic Lipinski There are strong parallels to be drawn between last week’s Woolwich murder and the Boston bombings in April, and not just because of the terrorism connection. The subsequent shooting and hospitalisation of the suspects in both cases raises the issue of how police and law enforcement agencies interview (or interrogate) suspects who are injured. One of the suspects in the Woolwich murder, Michael Adebowale, has now appeared in court while another, Michael Adebolajo, remai ..read more

Is it reasonable to expect juries to spend the time needed to check police transcripts against the audio when lawyers themselves do not? Shutterstock/Everett Collection Today, we take it for granted that police interviews with suspects will be electronically recorded and independently transcribed. That hasn’t always been the case. Police were once allowed to testify – with no evidence other than their own notes – that a suspect had made a “verbal confession”, with courts liable to accept the officer’s word against that of the defendant. During the 1990s, reforms aiming to prevent this kind of ..read more

False recollections can lead to wrongful convictions. Justin Gaurav Murgai A recent series of articles on The Conversation focused on the value of forensic science in criminal cases. Many specialities were covered. But what about forensic psychology? Professionals in this field perform may functions, including: providing psychological assessments and reports for courts and parole boards devising and evaluating appropriate programs for people in correctional facilities appearing in court as “expert witnesses”, and giving professional views on psychological matters. I would argue they have an ..read more

Behavioural differences in female psychopaths could cause them to slip under society’s radar. from shutterstock.comHear the word psychopath and most of us think of violent, dominant men. There are lots of male psychopathic monsters from movies to illustrate this point. Think Alex in A Clockwork Orange, or Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. But we do have some female examples: Annie Wilkes in Misery, and who could forget Alex Forrest’s bunny-boiling character in Fatal Attraction? These frightening fictional femme fatales stay with us – I’ve heard the term “bunny boiler” used to signify a woma ..read more

The coroner’s report into the Lindt Cafe siege questioned the adequacy of the New South Wales police negotiation. But is it possible to negotiate with terrorists? Hostage negotiation has been described as one of the most effective developments in law enforcement. Originating in the early 1970s, it was developed as a systematic approach to minimise casualties. This followed several hostage incidents that resulted in significant loss of lives, such as the Munich massacre (below). Hostage negotiation strategies focus on the idea of “contain and negotiate”. “Contain” mea ..read more

Professor Chabani Manganyi reflects on his time working as a black psychologist in the heart of the apartheid era. SuppliedThis is an extract from “Apartheid and the Making of a Black Psychologist: A Memoir by N Chabani Manganyi”. Chapter 5 is an account of Manganyi’s early years as a forensic psychologist in apartheid’s courtrooms. The first hint of a professional connection between psychology and the courts occurred unexpectedly after my return from the US in 1975. I had a consultation in Pretoria with David Soggot, a senior and well-known advocate. He and the instructing attorney were pre ..read more

Hand it over ShutterstockHow easy do you think it would be for someone to convince you that you’d seen something that never really happened? What about them doing this without actually saying anything misleading? That would almost be impossible, surely? Well, research into verbal and nonverbal influence suggests this can happen, and that we’re actually far more suggestible than we might like to think. We know that people easily can be misled through words, and that changing the way we phrase a question can affect how somebody answers it. For instance, if you ask someone “how tall was the man ..read more