The Strauss Kahn rape case in New York City is very instructive for defendants who think they can make up a story and get away with it. A chambermaid in a New York hotel accused Strauss-Kahn, the head of the World Bank, of raping her. The maid came up with a story and believed that the police would believe it. They didn’t. That’s because investigating is a profession, a craft, and an art. It requires training and draws upon intuition, experience and technology.
First of all the accuser did not expect the grilling she got. Police question every complainant, and the questioning can go on for hours. The last conversation the police had with the accuser lasted six hours. Bank records (bank records!) were obtained from all over the United States showing money in her name even though she claimed her only source of income was her salary from the hotel. She also claimed she had not returned to the rape room when card-key data showed otherwise. (Card-key data!). And she admitted she had lied about getting raped on her immigration form. So now the police knew they had a liar in their midst.
A wiretap investigation, hundreds of which are conducted in large cities all over America, picked up a target claiming to know the maid. Why would the accuser know the target of a criminal investigation? Then there was the recorded phone conversation between accuser and her drug dealer boyfriend incarcerated in Arizona in which she referred to Strauss Kahn as being “rich” and her “knowing what [she] was doing.” True, there is a dispute about what the accuser really said, but she did have a drug-dealing boyfriend. Of course she probably knew that jail conversations were taped, but why would she have thought that investigators would go beyond the facts of her story and listen to her conversations with her boyfriend? Now the police knew they had less than angelic accuser on their hands. The case went from airtight to problematic. Know this: just because you can fool your friends does not mean you can fool investigators.
Americans did not win two world wars by being stupid.
DavidZapp