Anatomy of a Murder Confession (The Marshall Project)

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Pamela Colloff
@pamelacolloff
One of America’s most celebrated homicide detectives--the Texas Ranger who obtained 93 confessions from Samuel Little--used questionable methods to obtain even more questionable confessions.

A blockbuster investigation by @MauriceChammah.

themarshallproject.org
Anatomy of a Murder Confession
Texas Ranger James Holland became famous for cajoling killers into confessing to their crimes. But did some of his methods — from lying to suspects to having witnesses hypnotized — ensnare innocent...
9:23 AM · Jan 18, 2022

https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/01/18/anatomy-of-a-murder-confession

Roughly 24 hours before Larry Driskill confessed to a murder he claimed he couldn’t remember, a stranger in sharply creased cowboy clothes approached him at the barn where he was working. The metal star above the man’s left shirt pocket indicated he was a Texas Ranger.

“Am I in trouble or what?” Driskill asked.

“No, we think you might be able to help us,” Ranger James Holland replied, inviting Driskill to chat at the sheriff’s office in Parker County, Texas. As they cruised the rural back roads west of Fort Worth on that afternoon in January 2015, Holland made small talk, drawing out that Driskill, a 52-year-old grandfather with a salt-and-pepper mustache and good-ol-boy twang, had served in the Air Force. Now, he oversaw county maintenance work performed by jail trustees. His worst brush with the law, he said, was a DWI in his 20s.

Holland, who was secretly (and legally) recording this exchange, occasionally teased at his intentions: He said he was part of a small crew of Rangers who focused on unsolved murders. “They put us together...and tell us that we can do whatever we want, as long as we solve cases,” he says to Driskill on the recording, which I obtained through a records request to the Parker County district attorney.

Once they arrived at the sheriff’s office, Holland offered Driskill coffee and reiterated that he wasn’t under arrest. The Ranger pulled out an image of a petite woman with dirty blonde hair.

“She don’t look familiar to me, period,” Driskill said. “I ain’t never seen her.”

*snip*