THE KAREN BOES CASE
On the morning of July 30, 2002, Karen Boes, a wife and mother of two teenagers, left her house to go shopping with her friend. While in Grand Rapids waiting for a Payless shoe store to open, she received a phone call alerting her that her house was on fire. Knowing that she left her 14-year-old daughter alone at the house, she raced home, only to learn the unthinkable – her daughter had perished in the fire. The nightmare quickly spiraled when investigators classified the fire as arson and began to finger Karen as a suspect.
THE INTERROGATION
Karen was interrogated multiple times over a six-week period. These extensive and confrontational interrogations lasted up to twelve hours each and led to no smoking guns. Minor contradictions emerged after police began to lie to Karen about the evidence they had, and Karen began to second guess her own memory. She was accused of setting the fire 193 times — she denied it 303 times.
Never on hundreds of hours of recorded phone calls at the jail did she admit to starting the fire. She wasn't read her Miranda rights, and she did not know she was being filmed during her interrogation. The court did not allow a false confession expert to explain her statements to the jury.
Cases dehaan got wrong
Amanda Gutweiler Hypes
On January 9 2001, a house fire in Pineville, Louisiana killed Amanda's three children. While Amanda sat in jail on capital charges for four years, authorities believed Dehaan's report which presented evidence of arson based on bunk data and unsound science.
Nineteen months after he testified at a Daubert hearing with incorrect computer modeling data, he failed to correct himself when he discovered his errors. Many years later, Dehaan withdrew his report saying the fire wasn't incendiary. Amanda could have been executed.
George Souliotes
In 1997, an apartment fire burned Souliotes’ property to the ground and, three tenants died in the fire. The prosecution used two main pieces of forensic evidence against Souliotes — burn patterns that indicated arson rather than an accidental fire and a chemical compound found at the fire scene and on Souliotes’ shoes. Fire investigators believed that certain burn patterns could only be caused by someone setting an intentional fire.
However, the latest research in fire investigation techniques have shown that the indicators commonly used in the past are misleading. The same patterns are consistent with accidental fires. The prosecution argued that the compound is found in lighter fluid and connected Souliotes to the crime. However, that same compound is now known to exist in many household products including solvents used in glues and adhesives for shoes and floor coverings. George spent 17 years in prison before a federal judge overturned his conviction and ordered his immediate release.
DeHaan Has No Credibility
After reviewing his actions related to the Gutweiler case, the Ethics Committee of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences officially recommended that John DeHaan be expelled from the Academy on July 13, 2015.