Larry Farwell Claims His Lie Detector System Can Read Your Mind. Is He a Scam Artist, or a Genius? - OneZero

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Larry Farwell Claims His Lie Detector System Can Read Your Mind. Is He a Scam Artist, or a Genius? - OneZero

Larry Farwell Claims His Lie Detector System Can Read Your Mind. Is He a Scam Artist, or a Genius? - OneZero

Posted: 06 Jan 2021 12:13 AM PST

Around the same time that Farwell published his study, the CIA was actively soliciting new lie-detection technology proposals. Farwell was unsure of his chances of landing a CIA contract: He had no lab, no computer, and no office. He hadn't even finished his PhD. But he applied anyway, and soon secured a roughly $1 million contract with the agency, OneZero confirmed, to conduct a series of experimental studies.

The CIA funding caught the attention of the national media, and outlets filed glowing stories about Farwell's "revolutionary device," as one CBS correspondent put it. One of his studies focused, in part, on identifying the perpetrators of real-life felony crimes. Another sought to determine if someone was an FBI agent or a Navy medical scientist⁠ based on their knowledge and expertise.

Though Farwell disputes the characterization, the CIA partnership didn't seem to amount to much: He didn't publish the studies for years, claiming they were secret. And eventually, the CIA contract ended. When I asked Farwell why the agency ended the relationship, he took a long pause, then said that it can take time for new technologies to catch on — and that the polygraph industry saw him as a threat.

A former CIA polygrapher who worked with Farwell gave me a more straightforward explanation: The CIA wanted something that functioned more like a conventional lie detector. "Once they realized it couldn't do that job they stepped away from it," the polygrapher said.

But Farwell's technology had gotten the attention of law enforcement officials far from Washington D.C. One day in the summer of 1999, Farwell got a call from a sheriff in a small, rural county in Missouri. The sheriff, Robert Dawson, needed help.

While investigating the horrific unsolved 1984 rape and murder of a young woman, Dawson and an investigator had identified a suspect named J.B. Grinder. Grinder, then 53, implicated himself in the murder, but officers were still trying to nail down the narrative. "He wasn't a very truthful fellow," Dawson, who's retired now, told me. So Dawson, who'd heard of Farwell in the news, gave him a call.

By then, Farwell's CIA research had stagnated. He'd gotten married, had a daughter, wrote a book (How Consciousness Commands Matter), and started teaching kung fu. But the sheriff was desperate for help and Farwell's technology, he said, "fit that bill." Farwell was happy to oblige. Though he'd published just one study about it back in 1991, Farwell was confident in the system he'd built — all of his government-funded research had confirmed its reliability and accuracy.

On August 5, 1999, Farwell and Grinder sat next to each other at two wood tables inside a small jail in Macon, Missouri. A mess of computer cables dangled between them.

Farwell explained that Grinder would see a series of phrases related to details of the crime flash across the screen. If he recognized any of them, he'd punch the left button on a controller. For everything else, he'd punch the other button. Among these "probes," as Farwell dubbed the phrases, were details of how the victim was kidnapped (the radiator hose in her car was cut); how she died (stabbed with a knife); and what was used to bind her hands (baling twine).

Grinder had strong P300 responses to the radiator hose, the stabbing, and bailing twine, Farwell said. And within minutes, Grinder had offered what Farwell called a "blood-curdling" confession. He pled guilty to the murder in question along with three other murders. Grinder was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Though the incident seems ethically dubious — Grinder didn't have a lawyer present when Farwell administered the test, and it isn't clear whether he'd consulted with one beforehand — from Farwell's point of view, it was a success. It wasn't like Grinder had been coerced, after all. He'd voluntarily taken the test.

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