CHAPTER 11
Chicago, October 22, 2019
IT WAS MIDMORNING ON THE DAY AFTER HER MEETING WITH JUDGE Boyle, court was in session, and the hallways were vacant when Rory walked through the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in The Loop. Her combat boots rattled with her gait and echoed off the walls. Rory found the courtroom, pulled her gray coat tight to her neck, opened the heavy door, and slid silently into the back row. The pews were mostly empty, but for the first three, which were lined with young men and women Rory guessed were students of the distinguished Lane Phillips. Groupies, she thought, who followed the good doctor everywhere he went. Lane’s court appearances brought high fervor for the young lads who hoped to see their mentor in rare form on the stand. Rory admitted that a Dr. Lane Phillips court appearance could rival any other type of entertainment.
Lane was testifying as an expert witness for the prosecution in the case of a double murder that took place the year before—a man was accused of killing his wife and mother in a fit of rage. Rory hadn’t seen much of him in the last week because he had been preparing for his time on the stand.
“Dr. Phillips,” the attorney asked from behind the podium. “You mentioned earlier that your specialty is in forensic psychology. Is that correct?”
“Correct,” Dr. Phillips said from the witness chair.
Lane Phillips was approaching fifty, but looked like he was in his thirties, with mismanaged hair and the remnants of a once-prominent dimple on his right cheek, which flashed when he smiled. His casual attitude toward anything that came his way made him popular with the students, who looked up to him like a deity. His laissez-faire style—messy hair, black jeans, worn sport coat, and no tie—surely spoke to the young audience that filled the front pews. Whenever Lane spent the night at Rory’s place, he never took more than ten minutes to shower and dress in the morning. His efficiency made Rory Moore, who was far from girlish, look like a beauty queen.
Lane’s appearance stiffly contrasted with the sharp-suited attorney cross-examining him, whose hair was perfect and whose cuff links shined brightly as they peeked from under the sleeves of his tailored suit. Even before Rory took into consideration the discussion between the two men, it was obvious they were rivals.
“Is it also true, Doctor, that you serve often as an expert witness in high-profile cases?”
“The profile of a case is not a variable in my decision to serve as a witness.”
“Very well,” the attorney said, walking from behind the podium. “But it is true that you often testify as an expert witness in cases of homicide, is it not?”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“Usually, your expertise is sought to help the jury understand the mind-set of the one who stands accused of murder. Is that correct?”
“Oftentimes, yes,” Dr. Phillips said. Lane sat upright with his hands folded in his lap, oozing a calm confidence against the attorney’s aggression.
“In this case today, you’ve offered the jury quite a detailed look, so to say, into the mind of my client. Is that fair to say?”
“I offered my opinion on your client’s mind-set when he killed his wife and mother, yes.”
The attorney let out a subtle laugh. “Objection, Your Honor.”
“Dr. Phillips,” the judge said. “Please limit your comments to the questions being asked and offer no more conjecture on guilt or in-nocence.”
“Excuse me, Your Honor,” Dr. Phillips said, looking back to the attorney. “I offered my opinion on what someone might be thinking if they had shot and killed their wife and mother.”
This got a subtle reaction from the students.
The attorney nodded his head and offered a small smile as he ran his tongue against the inside of his cheek.
“So, as in today’s earlier testimony, and in the many other cases in which you’ve served as an expert into the criminal mind, one might guess that you are employed by a government agency. Say, the FBI?”
He shook his head. “No.”
“No? Wouldn’t a distinguished mind such as yours be put to good use in the Criminal Investigative Division or the Behavioral Science Unit within the Federal Bureau of Investigation?”
Dr. Phillips opened his palms. “Perhaps.”
The attorney took a few steps forward. “You must, instead, be in private practice, then? Counseling such individuals on a regular basis. Surely, that is how you came to be such an expert on the criminal mind.”
“No,” Lane said calmly. “I’m not in private practice.”
“No?” The attorney shook his head. “Then please tell us, Dr. Phillips, with all of your advanced degrees and your many publications in forensic psychology, where exactly do you work?”
“The Murder Accountability Project.”
“Yes,” the attorney said, gathering papers and reading from them. “The Murder Accountability Project. That’s your pet project that has supposedly developed an algorithm to detect serial killers. Do I have that right?”
“Not really, no,” Lane said.
“Please enlighten us, then.”
“First, it’s not a pet project. It’s a legitimate LLC corporation that pays my employees and me a salary. And I didn’t supposedly develop anything. I actually developed an algorithm that tracks similarities between homicides across the country to look for trends. These trends can then lead to patterns, which can help law enforcement solve homicides.”
“And all these homicides you help to solve, how many of the accused perpetrators do you deal with personally as a psychologist?”
“My program identifies trends to help law enforcement track potential killers. Once we see a pattern, the authorities take over the case.”
“So the answer to how many of these alleged murderers you end up counseling as a psychologist would be zero. Is that correct?”
“I’m not directly involved with any of the accused that my program has helped identify.”
“So calling yourself an expert in psychology when you no longer practice the profession is a bit misleading, is it not?”
“No, sir. Misleading is dressing in a shiny suit and calling yourself an attorney, when really you’re just a hack throwing insults to distract the jury.”
Lane’s students tried unsuccessfully to mute their laughter.
“Dr. Phillips,” the judge said.
Lane nodded. “Excuse me, Your Honor.”
The attorney, unfazed, went back at his papers. “You are also a professor at the University of Chicago. Is that correct?”
Lane looked back at his rival. “Yes.”
“A professor of what, exactly?”
“Criminal and forensic psychology.”
“I see,” the attorney said again, walking back to the podium with a trying-too-hard confused look on his face and scratching his sideburn. “So you run a business that claims to identify killers, but you don’t work in any capacity of psychology with those killers. And you teach the psychology of the criminal mind to young college students. I’m struggling to understand where your practical experience comes from, Dr. Phillips? I mean, you’ve offered so much information about my client’s mind-set, and what he must have been thinking in the days leading up to the night his wife and mother were killed. Insights such as the ones you offered have to come from practical, clinical experience working with men and women convicted of violent crimes. But it looks to me like the prosecution has put on the stand a so-called expert witness who runs a business that sells algorithms and data to the police, and who teaches psychology to college kids. Doctor, have you heard of the axiom ‘those who cannot do, teach’ ?”
“Objection!” the prosecutor said as she stood from behind the table.
“Withdrawn, Your Honor. I have no more questions for Dr. Phillips.”
The DA was heading to the witness-box. “Dr. Phillips, prior to taking a university faculty position and starting the Murder Accountability Project, where were you employed?”
“At the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
“For how long?”
“Ten years.”
“And what was your role within the Bureau?”
“I was hired as a forensic psychologist.”
“And your job was to analyze crimes to determine the type of person who may have committed them. Is that accurate?”
“Yes, I was a profiler.”
“During your tenure at the Bureau, you worked on over one hundred fifty cases. What was your clearance rate in those cases, where your expertise in profiling the perpetrator led to an arrest?”
“I had a close rate of ninety-two percent.”
“The national average for clearance rate of homicides is sixty-four percent. Your success rate was thirty points higher than that. Before your tenure with the Bureau, Dr. Phillips, you wrote a thesis on the criminal mind titled Some Choose Darkness. That thesis is still widely heralded as a comprehensive look into the minds of killers and why they kill. Please tell us, Dr. Phillips, how you gained such insight.”
“I spent two years during my PhD studies on sabbatical, during which I traveled the world interviewing convicted killers, understanding motive, mind-set, empathy, and patterns of how a human being decides to take another’s life. The dissertation is a well-received and peer-reviewed document.”
“In fact,” the DA said, “more than ten years after your thesis was published, it is still popular in the forensic community. Am I correct?”
“That’s correct.”
“In fact, your thesis is used as the main training tool around which the FBI teaches new hires who join the Bureau as profilers. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“In addition to your dissertation, you also compiled your findings on serial killers of the last one hundred years into a true-crime book. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“As of the latest printing, how many copies of that book are in print?”
“About six million.”
“No more questions, Your Honor.”