Interrogations-and-Confessions-Handbook

544 A Psychology of Interrogations and Confessions
The Confession to the Murders
On the morning of 23 March 1994, Hoyt drove her husband to work. She then
stopped at the local post office to pick up the mail. At the post office she met
a state trooper, Bobby Bleck, whom she knew well as a local policeman. Bleck
asked her to meet somebody who was interested in discussing her deceased
children in relation to SIDS research (the police denied at trial that she was
tricked into thinking that she was discussing a research project). Hoyt agreed
and was introduced to Susan Mulvey, who in fact was a police investigator. She
agreed to accompany the officers to the state police barracks, but stated that
she would first have to go home and take her teenaged son Jay to school. The
officers agreed with this. While Jay was getting ready for school Hoyt showed
the two officers her family photo album containing photographs of her deceased
children, which she took with her to the police barracks.
Hoyt arrived at the police barracks between 10.30 and 10.45 in the morning.
Investigator Courtwright was waiting there for them. Hoyt was then read
her Miranda rights. Officer Mulvey then began to talk to her about her family,
including the background to the deaths of her five infants. At about 11.30
there was a break and when the interview re-commenced shortly afterwards,
Mulvey allegedly told Hoyt that they had proof that she had suffocated all of
her babies while she and Officer Bleck comforted her physically by stroking her
hands and placing an arm around her shoulder, respectively. She eventually
broke down, began to cry and admitted to having murdered her five babies. At
about 13.50 a written statement was taken from her, but she refused to sign
it without the presence of her husband (Hoyt told me that the reason for this
refusal was that she was in the habit of always signing important documents
in the presence of her husband). Undoubtedly, the police were concerned that
if they waited for her husband she might change her mind about signing the
statement, or that her husband might advise her not to sign it. To overcome
the risk of this happening, the police interviewed her again in the presence of
a qualified shorthand court stenographer, who wrote down contemporaneously
the questions and answers. This was then used as Hoyt’s ‘Sworn Statement’.
The recording of this statement commenced at 2.30 in the afternoon. Present
were the three officers, Courtwright, Mulvey and Bleck, all of whom asked some
questions or made comments during the interview.
In this Sworn Statement Hoyt makes a full confession to the murder of her
five babies by means of suffocation. The motive, she alleged, was her inability
to cope with their crying or screaming. Regarding the death of her oldest child
Jamie, she explained when asked to tell what had happened:
I was getting dressed in the bathroom, and he wanted to come in, and I didn’t
want him to. I told him to wait out in the hall until I was done, and he kept yelling,
mommy, mommy and screaming. And I took a towel and went out in the living
room, and I put the towel over his face to get him to quiet down, and he struggled.
And once he finally got quiet, he was gone.
At 15.43, after Hoyt’s husband, Timothy, had arrived at the police barracks,
Mrs Hoyt signed the original handwritten statement. Her signature was