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(单词翻译:双击或拖选)
Boylan believes that a witness's memory is as crucial to a case as any physical evidence.
What I would ultimately want would be for police to really protect that memory as evidence like they would any other piece of evidence in case whether it be fingerprints1 on the murder weapon or fibers2.
But when Boylan arrives in Petaluma, Polly's father is skeptical3 that she can help.
She showed up with an entourage of TV producers and FBI agents, and I found it very disconcerting that this beautiful blonde woman being escorted through the police department and being portrayed4 as an individual who might very well break the case open. My concern was that they had taken my daughter's tragedy and gone Hollywood with it, because Jeanne didn't seem like a person from the real world to me.
I wish that I was here telling you tonight that we had found Polly and she was gonna be coming home safe.
But Boylan refuses to be distracted by the media circus. She focuses her attention on Polly's friends. Her secret approach is to do the opposite of what a police sketch5 artist would normally do.
The usual police process for preparing this composite is just a visit for an artist, or an investigator6 to sit down and have an eyewitness7 look through a selection of features.
Him, those are the eyes.
You choose eyes, you choose a nose, you choose a chin, etc.
But Boylan says looking at so many faces in the composite book can confuse witnesses and contaminate their memory.
What happens when you sit a crime victim down, and you have them look through a catalogue, the typical catalogue has 960 fore8 facial photographs in it. You're taking 960 images, you are overlaying it over that original recall. That's how the distortion and the contamination takes place. If I'm lucky and only if there's a trauma9 in the circumstance under which this eyewitness saw the suspect. That information will be encoded deeply into memory and would still be there, but I have to work through all the contamination and try to retrieve10 that, that deeply embedded11 level of recall.
Because of inconsistencies in the girls' stories, the police suspect that they might actually be covering for Polly.
They have been, basically been called liars12, the profile that had been drawn13 up was that Polly had run away with her boyfriend and that the girl friends were covering up for that in some way. But the girls insist that Polly was abducted14 by a stranger. In order to get the investigation15 back on course, Boylan knows she has to gain the girls' trust to get a better depiction16 of the suspect.
The real secret is, was to create a situation in which both of the kids individually felt that they were in control, and I was a guest on their territory.
One of the ways Boylan gains the girls' trust is to dress like them.
And I put on something that a 12-year-old would be comfortable in being around the plump blue jeans, the sweatshirt, pull my hair back and I just became more like them.
entourage: the group following and attending to some important person; staff
disconcerting: upsetting; that causes an emotional disturbance; disturbing
1 fingerprints | |
n.指纹( fingerprint的名词复数 )v.指纹( fingerprint的第三人称单数 ) | |
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2 fibers | |
光纤( fiber的名词复数 ); (织物的)质地; 纤维,纤维物质 | |
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3 skeptical | |
adj.怀疑的,多疑的 | |
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4 portrayed | |
v.画像( portray的过去式和过去分词 );描述;描绘;描画 | |
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5 sketch | |
n.草图;梗概;素描;v.素描;概述 | |
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6 investigator | |
n.研究者,调查者,审查者 | |
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7 eyewitness | |
n.目击者,见证人 | |
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8 fore | |
adv.在前面;adj.先前的;在前部的;n.前部 | |
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9 trauma | |
n.外伤,精神创伤 | |
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10 retrieve | |
vt.重新得到,收回;挽回,补救;检索 | |
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11 embedded | |
a.扎牢的 | |
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12 liars | |
说谎者( liar的名词复数 ) | |
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13 drawn | |
v.拖,拉,拔出;adj.憔悴的,紧张的 | |
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14 abducted | |
劫持,诱拐( abduct的过去式和过去分词 ); 使(肢体等)外展 | |
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15 investigation | |
n.调查,调查研究 | |
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16 depiction | |
n.描述 | |
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