Remembering Satan (17 page)

“I’ve thought about going into anger-control counseling,” Rabie admitted. “In my normal life I have no problem with anger control. Those that are very close to me, I can get very angry with—verbally, not physically.”

“Does it ever turn out to be malicious?” asked Midthun. “Have you found yourself to be vindictive?”

“When provoked, and my anger is really high, I can be vindictive, yes,” Rabie agreed.

“Have you ever been a victim of abuse?”

“Never physical abuse, but I do feel that I was a bit of a victim of my father’s mental abuse.”

When Midthun asked him if he had ever been in a fistfight, Rabie said that he had gotten his nose bloodied by a schoolmate back when he was in high school. “All I did was grab him, because I’m not a boxer, and he came up a couple days later and apologized to me, and we’ve been pretty good friends since then.”

“What you just described to me is a textbook description of somebody who is normal,” said Midthun. “Is it true?”

“Yeah, that’s what happened.”

“Somebody who is acting out, who is gonna place blame someplace other than where it belongs—like, on themselves—they’re gonna blame others for their problems,” Midthun observed. “I mean, they would retaliate. It would be one of those things where years after that fight they would still be holding a grudge. They would be still looking for a way to get even, and here you’re telling me this guy has become a friend.… Doesn’t it make sense that only somebody who is very comfortable with hurting other people could commit the type of crimes that you’re accused of?”

“Yeah, I guess,” Rabie said. “I hadn’t looked at it that way in the whole case.”

“In those formative years, was there ever any sexual acting out?” Midthun asked. “I’m looking at sexual deviancy.… I’m not talking about getting your hands on a
Playboy
magazine when you’re thirteen years old.”

Rabie admitted that he had masturbated frequently, but otherwise his lifetime sexual experience was confined to five
women. He said he was once tempted by a prostitute, but he was broke at the time.

This all seemed so normal—bland even, almost Victorian. “The person that was just described to me has no ties to these deplorable acts,” Midthun said. Why, then, did Rabie think he had been charged with these crimes?

“Because Brian has a big hard-on for me.”

“Brian?”

“Schoening. Brian brought my name into this. Paul was searching for the individual to hang it on,” Rabie explained, giving his version of events. Having studied the police reports and transcripts of some of the interviews, and having heard some of the department gossip, Rabie pointed out that Julie initially had implicated her father, an uncle, and a friend of her father’s. “She was asked if the friend was still around, and her response was, ‘Probably,’ which would exclude me, ’cause she knew I was around, and it would exclude Ray Risch, which is my closest friend, ’cause she had ridden with him less than a month before that.” When Paul was first questioned and started naming friends who might be involved, he kept visualizing someone big. All the other men he named were over six feet, but for some reason Schoening kept bringing Rabie’s name back into the discussion. Then, when Julie was shown the photo lineup, the only ones she knew by name were Rabie and Risch. “I think Paul is really enjoying that he is running the sheriff’s department ragged on a case that could’ve been over very quickly,” said Rabie. “I actually have had almost minimal contact with the girls or the kids—any of the kids. I can’t even tell you what Ericka looks like.”

Then why was Rabie so ambivalent when he was first questioned about his involvement in the case? He claimed that the detectives had never hinted at the extent of the charges; he thought they were talking about a sexual molestation, such as inappropriate touching, that might even have been unintentional
or have taken place while he was intoxicated. “They’re talking about a molest that occurred in the seventies, and they’re not very specific; they’re telling some things about a picture and [being] nude, but they’re not saying what I’m doing, exactly.… I do start doubting my own memory if you’ve got a whole string of people telling that I’ve been doing this, and you’ve got photographs.” Since he learned the nature of the charges and the span of time they were supposed to have covered, he no longer believed that he could have blocked the events out of his mind.

At this point, Midthun began preparing the four questions that would make up the heart of the test. He reviewed some of the charges that Ericka and Julie had made against Rabie, which were clearly not accidental touching or incidental molestations but savage, chronic abuse. He would ask a question concerning each of the girls to determine whether Rabie had ever had sexual contact with them. Another question would be whether Rabie had threatened the Ingram children. “For the sake of the test, we don’t care about Paul and we don’t care about Sandy, because they’re adults,” said Midthun; in any case, Rabie had not been charged with any crimes concerning the parents. A final question, which Midthun said would enhance the reliability of the test, would be whether Rabie intended to respond truthfully. Midthun then took a bathroom break and came back to wire the suspect to the polygraph machine.

The lie detector is both a crude and a fragile instrument. It has been used by police departments since 1924 and has changed little since that time. Midthun strapped two corrugated rubber tubes around Rabie’s midsection, one across his upper chest and one just above his stomach, over his diaphragm. These pneumatic tubes led to a bellows that recorded the expansion of the lungs with each breath. He then placed a cardiac cuff, such as medical technicians use to take blood pressure, around
Rabie’s upper right arm, and inflated it to more than eighty pounds of pressure—somewhat higher than normal, to account for Rabie’s moderate corpulence. Finally, he attached metal plates around Rabie’s left index and ring fingers with Velcro straps. These tiny plates measured the galvanic skin response (GSR), which is, essentially, the reaction of the sweat glands to the minuscule amount of electric current running through the plates. Moisture coming into contact with the current would produce a measurable response.

The information gathered by these devices is recorded on a continuously moving graph. Normal breathing appears as a wavy line of gentle hills and valleys. The blood pressure is represented by a series of spikes reflecting the constrictions of the heart. The GSR is a narrower, undulating line. In each case, there is a commonsense understanding of the reaction that is being gauged: a person says, “I caught my breath,” or “My heart pounded,” or “I broke out in a cold sweat.” It is exactly these kinds of stress responses that the polygraph records. Of the three, the GSR demonstrates the most dramatic reaction, sometimes producing wild swings across the graph that look like angry scribbles, but respiration is thought to be the most significant indicator. People who are trying to cheat the polygraph will sometimes hold their breath or take drugs that suppress their reactions. In fact, people can be trained to beat the polygraph through rather minute actions such as flexing one’s toes or biting one’s tongue. Coughing, sighing, or simply shifting one’s weight in the chair can produce reactions, which is why the polygraph operator must constantly observe the subject and note on the chart each time the person swallows or takes a deep breath. The startled reaction to a ringing telephone looks like an earthquake on the graph.

What is actually being detected is not deception but anxiety. The philosophy behind the machine is that lying is inherently conflictual. That’s not true for everyone, however;
sociopaths who don’t appear to suffer the ordinary pangs of conscience may lie without registering measurable stress on the polygraph. Moreover, people who are genuinely deluded will appear to be telling the truth even if what they are saying is beyond possibility. Some studies have shown that polygraphs are accurate only 64 to 71 percent of the time when used in criminal investigations. The most common error is to mistake innocent subjects as guilty, rather than vice versa. For all of these reasons, polygraphs are generally not allowed in court, and limitations have been placed on their use by private employers.

Many law-enforcement officers, however, believe that in the hands of an experienced operator, such as Maynard Midthun, the polygraph is close to being infallible. Jim Rabie believed this when he was a cop. Midthun offered the example of two men accused of a bank robbery. One is guilty, the other innocent. Each has been identified by an eyewitness. Each convincingly denies his involvement. “We don’t know if they’re telling the truth,” said Midthun. There is a difference between the two suspects, however. “The guy who really did it,” Midthun explains, offering a commonplace understanding of the nature of memory, “he experiences distinct physiological changes that take place when he walks through the front door of that bank, and he pulls out that weapon and sticks it in the face of that teller.… It’s as though somebody has turned on a video camera in his mind.… There is a permanent record there of the words spoken, the deeds done, the emotions felt—it’s all there, recorded.” The innocent man, on the other hand, hasn’t had the experience. There’s no tape playing in his head. Three years after the bank robbery, both men come in for polygraphs. The innocent man denies he robbed the bank. “What I see on the polygraph charts is general nervous tension, and it’s that way throughout the entire chart. One question does not mean any more to him than any of the others, because it’s the same. He
has no frame of reference. He never spoke those words. He never did that deed.” When the guilty man takes the same test, however, “at that point, the video camera clicks on. The camera’s been off for three years, except when he wanted to reflect back on how fun it was and how cool he was for getting away with it. But when we go into the polygraph test, he cannot push the off switch. He cannot turn that son of a gun off.… I ask the question, ‘Did you rob the bank?’ The camera is playing and he sees an instant replay of himself entering the bank, sticking his nose in the teller’s face, and watching her just totally lose control. He’ll never forget that.… There’s that adrenaline rush. Then he flunks the test.”

Because of his experience in the use of the polygraph, Rabie may have realized that harboring secret guilty thoughts about one’s past actions can cause false reactions; for instance, the innocent person who is accused of robbing the bank might register a highly anxious reaction if he had done something similar in the past. That’s why polygraph operators spend several hours before the test trying to determine areas of conflict; it’s also why the questions must be made as specific as possible. In any case, as he was being wired to the machine Rabie suddenly felt the need to clear his conscience. It turned out that his sexual life had not been unblemished, after all; he admitted to several indiscretions, the most serious being an incident that happened when he was thirteen and he was playing with a four-year-old girl. “I don’t remember exactly the circumstances,” Rabie said, fumbling over his words, “but I ended up—I know I had my penis between her legs—didn’t try to enter her in any manner, but between her legs.”

“Let’s chalk that one up to one of life’s experiences,” Midthun said forgivingly. “What I would be interested in is if you went back for seconds, because that would begin to make a pattern, right? One time does not make a pattern. The true pedophile, the person who would do the horrible things that
the Ingram family has complained about, has a pattern of unnatural acts.”

To establish a controlled lie as a base for measurement, Midthun had Rabie write the numeral 7 on a piece of paper. He then instructed him to respond “No” when asked if he had written the numerals 4, 5, or 6, which was an honest response; then say “No” for 7, which was a lie; then “No” again for 8 and 9. Midthun would then have what he called “a perfect picture of a lie, much like the bank robber tells, surrounded by nervous truthful responses, much like the innocent person.” Rabie’s GSR barely registered when he lied about the 7, but his heartbeat jumped off the chart. Midthun had to adjust the pen to keep it on the graph.

Midthun then began the test, mixing in irrelevant questions with the four key questions that were designed to determine whether Rabie was guilty or innocent.

“Is your first name James?”

“Yes,” said Rabie.

“You were born in the month of May?”

“Yes.”

“Regarding sexual contact with the Ingram children, do you intend to answer truthfully?” This was Midthun’s first key question.

“Yes!” Rabie said loudly.

“Is today Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Have you ever had any sexual contact with Julie?” This was the second key question.

“No.”

“Other than what you’ve told me about, between the ages of twelve and thirty, did you ever take part in an unnatural sex act?”

“No.”

“Do you sometimes watch television?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have any sexual contact with Ericka?” The third key question.

“No.”

“Have you ever threatened any of the Ingram children?” The fourth key question.

“No.”

“Before the age of thirty, did you ever intentionally hurt anyone?”

“No.”

Midthun performed the test three times to make certain of Rabie’s responses. In each of the four relevant questions, the graph showed that Rabie had lied.

11