Create Your Own Investigative Luck with Science-Based Interviewing

When I was working cases as an investigator, I used to say, “It’s time to go create my own luck.” I was not talking about luck in any literal sense. I was talking about knocking on more doors, finding more witnesses, speaking with more people, and gathering more information about a case. That phrase meant it was time to go to work. In investigations, the breaks in a case often come when you least expect them, but they usually come after effort, persistence, laying a strong case foundation, and, at the root of it all, better information gathering.

Better interviewing with science-based interviewing creates better investigative luck. Don't "wing it" in investigative interviews.

Statement evidence is the bedrock of any case, from homicides to corporate investigations. It gives context to the evidence you already have, including your most powerful evidence like DNA, helps you locate additional sources of evidence, identifies more witnesses, builds a deeper understanding of the case overall, corroborates evidence, and gets you closer to ground truth.

That is why I have never been very interested in the idea of “getting lucky” or "winging it" in any interview.

What people call luck is often the result of better questions, rapport, active listening, and Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE). The investigators who seem to “get lucky” are usually the ones who ask better questions, avoid shutting people down, dump confession hunting, and create the conditions for useful investigative information to come out.

Why Science-Based Interviewing Produces Better Information

Science-based interviewing is not about chasing confessions. It is not about trying to overpower someone in a conversation. It is not about forcing a version of events to fit your theory of the case. It is about gathering reliable information, testing accounts, developing statement evidence, and using communication in a way that helps you understand what happened. That philosophical shift is what matters.

When investigators focus too heavily on getting an admission, they can miss the larger value of the interview itself. A good interview can reveal timelines, relationships, motives, contradictions, knowledge, opportunity, access, and behavior before and after the event. It can point you toward new witnesses, new records, new surveillance, and new evidence you did not know existed.

Good interviews do not just fill in blanks or confirm case theories. They don't try to cram a narrative to fit with what pseudoscientific "tools" tell us. They help investigators develop a more complete picture and get closer to the truth of what happened.

Statement Evidence Gives Context to Every Other Form of Evidence

Statement evidence is sometimes treated as secondary to physical or forensic evidence, but in real cases, it ties the whole picture together.

A fingerprint may place someone somewhere. DNA may connect a person to an object or location. Video may show movement. Phone records may show contact. But statement evidence helps explain the who, what, when, where, why, and how around those facts.

It gives context to evidence that may not be evidence at all.

It helps investigators understand what the evidence may mean, what it may not mean, and where to look next. It helps identify the people who saw something, heard something, noticed something, or did something. It uncovers relationships, routines, conflicts, actions, timelines, explanations, statement-evidence contradictions, and omissions.

In other words, statement evidence does not compete with the rest of the evidence. It strengthens it, tests it, and helps corroborate it.

That is one reason better information gathering matters so much. If statement evidence is mishandled, cut short, or contaminated by poor questioning, the whole investigation loses one of its strongest tools for understanding the case.

Asking Better Questions Is How Investigators Create Their Own Luck

Poor interviews are built on a long string of closed-ended questions, interruptions, and rushed assumptions. That approach may feel active, but it produces less detail, less narrative case data, and less useful information. Better interviews begin with better questions.

Productive questions keep people talking. They help witnesses describe what happened in their words and more of them. Think more case data. Better questions create opportunities to assess what is volunteered, what is missing, what is avoided, what is corroborated, what was previously unknown, and what needs to be explored further. This trait is one of the biggest differences in science-based interviewing. Because it is about information.

And the data on interviewing is worth paying attention to. In a field study by Snook et al. (2012) of 80 suspect interviews, less than 1% of the questions were open-ended. About 40% were closed yes-no questions, and about 29% were probing questions. Yet open-ended questions produced far longer responses, averaging about 91 words, compared with about 15 words for probing questions and about 10 words for closed yes-no questions. Free narratives were requested in only about 14% of the interviews, and the 80–20 talking rule was violated in every single one. So despite the marketing behind legacy interviewing and step-by-step confession systems, these unsupported methods continue to leave investigators short on the very thing they need most: better statement evidence.

Strategic Use of Evidence (SUE) Improves Interviews and Investigations

Another major part of creating investigative luck is better use of evidence. After all the information age has given us more information than ever before.

Legacy methods treat evidence like something that should be shown all at once (overcoming objections), as early as possible (investigative shortcut), in the hope that it will force an admission followed by a confession (investigative shortcut). These can be mistakes, maybe not in this case or a past case, but one coming soon.

Evidence is more useful when it is used with the Strategic Use of Evidence's Evidence Framing Matrix. First information is gathered from the person’s account through SUE's questioning strategy. Then SUE uses evidence in a way that evaluates the account rather than simply announcing what the investigator knows.

It allows the person to commit to their version of events before you reveal everything you know. That matters because once they have locked themselves into an account, omissions, contradictions, and false exculpatory statements become more meaningful. Those exposed lies do more than show inconsistency. They can increase the perceived value of supporting evidence and push people to evaluate the rest of the case more carefully. In that sense, a lie about evidence is not just a bad fact for the suspect; it can sharpen how the other evidence is understood. Brimbal and Jones (2018) found that exposed lies increased judgments of guilt much like confessions did, but unlike confessions, exposed lies also increased how probative jurors saw supporting evidence, especially physical evidence such as fingerprints and security footage. Their work suggests that exposing lies can be just as powerful as a confession. This is a huge paradigm shift from legacy interview methods, which are an outdated playbook for modern investigators.

Instead of using evidence like a hammer to crash through resistance like a bull in a china shop, use it like a map. Let it guide the structure and planning of your interview and questioning. Let it help you explore the account. Let it help you identify where the statement aligns with the known facts (corroboration) and where it falls apart (statement-evidence inconsistency). Strategic Use of Evidence and its preceding questioning strategy is a smarter investigative use of evidence. It allows you to collect uncontaminated, corroborated statements while testing veracity (without pseudoscience), and it allows you to gain more value from the interview itself.

Rapport Helps Investigators Gather More Useful Information

Rapport is another part of this equation, and it is often misunderstood. Rapport is not weakness. It is not fake friendliness. It is not simply being polite. Rapport is certainly not "soft," after all, it's used in national security situations. In fact, "[r]apport is not only the bedrock of successful relationships; it provides the best path to securing information from difficult people" (Alison & Alison, 2020).

With rapport, people give better information. Including victims, witnesses, and suspects. They are more likely to stay engaged when the interviewer is calm, treats them with respect, and is engaged in what they are saying. That does not mean the interviewer accepts everything at face value. It means the interviewer is creating a setting where useful information is more likely to emerge.

When interviewers rush, dominate, accuse too early, or repeatedly cut people off, they damage the very thing they need most: information. Rapport keeps interviews alive.

In short, rapport helps investigators gather longer narratives, clearer explanations, better detail, and more cooperation.

Stop Waiting for Luck in Your Investigative Interviews

Investigators do not need to wait around for luck to show up in an interview room.

They need better information gathering.

They need better questions. They need better listening. They need better questioning and timing with evidence. They need rapport that keeps people talking long enough to produce useful information. They need a method built around reliability, not just pressure.

That is how investigators create their own luck.

So the next time someone says, “We just need a little luck on this one,” I would say this:

Luck is not the plan.

Go knock on the door.

Go ask the better question.

Go listen longer.

Go rapport more.

Go use your evidence smarter.

Go gather the information that moves the case forward.

That is not luck.

That is science-based interviewing.

Also, Happy St. Patrick's Day! 🍀

Science-Based Interviewing Resources

Alison, E., & Alison, L. (2020). Rapport: The four ways to read people. Vermilion.

Brimbal, L., & Jones, A. M. (2018). Perceptions of suspect statements: A comparison of exposed lies and confessions. Psychology, Crime & Law, 24(2), 156–176. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2017.1390111

Hartwig, M., & Cory, C. (2025, June 18). A paradigm shift in science-based interviewing: Interrogating to elicit true and false exculpatory statements. Police Chief Online.

Snook, B., Luther, K., Quinlan, H., & Milne, R. (2012). Let ’em talk! A field study of police questioning practices of suspects and accused persons. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 39(10), 1328–1339. https://doi.org/10.1177/0093854812449216