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Posted on: October 25, 2008 4:41 PM, by Greg Laden
But wait, there's more!
Oh. Never mind.
What I think is really funny is that she carved the B on her face backwards. Note to self: if I'm ever going to carve a letter in my face and use a mirror, REMEMBER THAT EVERYTHING IN THE MIRROR IS BACKWARDS ... (though, strangely, not upside down).
Politics
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Comments
Bit depressing that the police apparently relied on a polygraph test to decide her story wasn't true...
Posted by: Felicia Gilljam | October 25, 2008 5:01 PM
Felicia, I'm no fan of polygraphs either, but they're usually used as leverage where the police are already pretty sure what's going on (not that they're necessarily right).
"Are you sure you want to be on record saying that? This indicates otherwise...."
I do find myself curious how the mental illness that she reported effected the results of the polygraph.
Posted by: Stephanie Z | October 25, 2008 5:15 PM
From the photo is was fairly obvious that she did it in a mirror (I remember a similar fictional incident in an Ann Tyler novel, so it came to mind as soon as I saw it).
Given that, just HOW DUMB are the main street press to run off with story, don't they have any sense?
I suspect the polygraph test was not relied on. I suspect it was used to put some pressure on the woman to make her fess up.
Posted by: sailor | October 25, 2008 5:29 PM
Yeah, they already didn't believe her.
What's weird is that apparently she carved herself up and THEN decided to make up this story... She seems to be very troubled.
Posted by: The Ridger | October 25, 2008 5:57 PM
Any cops out there wanna tell us how often false reports are filed by people with this sort of problem?
Pretty much all the reports filed against me have been false. I swear.
But seriously, I think this happens all the time.
Posted by: greg laden | October 25, 2008 6:19 PM
Doubly dumb because she's a McCain campaign worker. My, my, they're getting desperate, aren't they?
Posted by: Kate | October 25, 2008 7:19 PM
BACKWARDS ... (though, strangely, not upside down).
What is up with that anyway? What is intrinsic to right/left that is different than up/down? In college I asked my Physics prof, and he said something like "I can trace the ray diagram and see it, but...why it should be I don't know."
Anyway. Duh it was a hoax.
Posted by: Ropty | October 25, 2008 8:12 PM
of course Richard Feynman can answer your mirror questions:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msN87y-iEx0
Posted by: clevedan | October 25, 2008 8:38 PM
People who are poor liars may fool a flatfoot, but will almost always be tripped up by a detective, and highly unlikely to con an entire squad of detectives. Those who excel at lying are practically guaranteed to fool the police, and fool every one of them.
A memorable example was Tom Coleman, the single-source informant of Tulia, Texas, whose testimony sent 46 poor people to prison in 1999 for drug dealing convictions without a bit of physical evidence. No guns, no money, no drugs, no evidence of profit, and no evidence of drug use. Real drug dealers would have been able to afford good lawyers; the Tulia defendants couldn't afford much of anything.
Posted by: Rose Colored Glasses | October 25, 2008 9:17 PM
CNN bragging that they didn't carry the story is a bit tiresome.
Posted by: aporeticus | October 25, 2008 9:23 PM
aporeticus: Right. I was thinking this was a case where they screwed up and didn't have the story nailed down in time to push it out and at the last second were saved by the bell.
Posted by: greg laden | October 25, 2008 9:27 PM
The really annoying part is that the original story continues to have legs, despite it being shown to be a hoax. People will see the initial reports, some of them won't bother to check it out further, and the damage continues. Thanks for posting both videos, but I can easily imagine people viewing the first one and then going off about it without getting the whole story. (Okay, maybe viewers of this site, not so much, as skepticism is generally valued around here.)
Any news agency that reported the original story has a duty to spend at least twice as much effort broadcasting the fact that it is a hoax.
Posted by: Tom L | October 27, 2008 3:27 PM