NEW VEROSCOPE ANALYSIS. ALEX COX AND LORI VALLOW DAYBELL.

Added: 2026-06-04

[00:00:00]Welcome to the Bariscope analysis today of the Cox statement, which is the Alex Cox statement uh on scene body cam from the officer. And uh if you're new to the case, Alex Cox shot and killed Lorie Valow's fourth husband, Charles Valow.

[00:00:19]Um and Cox said it was self-defense. So, we're going to be analyzing the body cam uh interview and using forensic linguistics, we're going to see where we can find uh truth, honesty, uh or possibly deception. But we enter the statement as always believing the suspect until they themselves talk us out of it. Um, and I'm giving you a quick snap preview of uh the sorts of findings that we see. For instance, here at the actual murder itself, we see a collapse linguistically and the famous that was it. And many suspects like to end the conversation once it's uncomfortable with a and that's that and that was it. even on the witness stand they resort to this very common uh attempt to end all debates all conversation.

[00:01:17]Um and also we'll be noticing the change of language with the uh with the bat. So sometimes it's a bat, sometimes the bat, sometimes her bat, somebody's nobody's bat and then it becomes the bat and even that bat.

[00:01:37]So, we look forensically why articles and pronouns swap between the weapon at the scene. Anyway, let's go back to the actual um video itself so that we can get uh the the words which are used on body cam and then we'll go back to the analysis.

[00:02:02]>> Weapon right here. Yes, sir.

[00:02:07]>> By the way, he was never charged.

[00:02:09]>> Who else is in the house?

[00:02:10]>> No one else in the house.

[00:02:11]>> Okay, just have a seat right there.

[00:02:12]>> Let's get FD in here.

[00:02:14]>> Have a seat.

[00:02:14]>> Yeah.

[00:02:15]>> 18 security. We got We got >> So, what do you think?

[00:02:18]>> You have some ID on you, sir?

[00:02:19]>> Yeah.

[00:02:23]>> What happened today? How did it get to this?

[00:02:27]>> I don't know. He was enraged.

[00:02:29]>> What's going on? What happened?

[00:02:31]>> Oh, he was talking with my sister earlier.

[00:02:34]>> No. What happened today, though? like just in the last 20 minutes.

[00:02:37]>> He came to >> just getting the subtitles on for you.

[00:02:42]>> He came at me with a bat.

[00:02:43]>> Okay. Was he living here or visiting?

[00:02:45]>> No, he came to pick up his son.

[00:02:47]>> Okay. Is the son inside?

[00:02:48]>> No. My sister took him to school.

[00:02:50]>> Okay. So, it was just you at the house.

[00:02:52]>> Yes.

[00:02:52]>> And he came How long What time did he come to pick up pick up the son?

[00:02:56]>> Uh I don't know. 20 minutes ago, maybe.

[00:02:58]>> Okay. So, you know who he is? Let him in.

[00:03:00]>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:03:01]>> Okay. No, I think they were talking earlier, then she left and then he got into it with me.

[00:03:08]>> Like what? What do you mean?

[00:03:11]>> I don't know. He was He was accusing me of Come on over here. That truck's going to be really loud.

[00:03:22]So, if you've been following the Veriscope channel for a while, by now you'll be picking up all of his deceptive markers and putting in flags where you see them, either at conversational speed or afterwards with the transcript, um, which you'll see and will mark up the document, putting in different colors and flags, which makes it easier at a glance to get a a feel for the shape, uh, as to whether or not you're being gassed. it or if there is deception within the statement, but at conversational speed. And we'll let this play so that those who are advanced enough can do it at conversational speed. You'll be picking up all of the hedging, all of the minimizing, all of the avoidance, all of the not actually answering the question or slightly changing the question and answering that slight change like politicians do. uh that little switch. Um, so get a feel for the language, get a feel for um inside. What is he thinking? Get that linguistic rapport because we can always play the tape again. And we'll be going through in detail each of his sentences and showing where he's being either honest and truthful or where he is constructing rather than delivering episodic memory which which would have a different signature or in his language from his baseline. Let's carry on.

[00:05:03]>> What was he accusing you of?

[00:05:10]So, he's just shot and killed.

[00:05:14]>> He was just yelling at me.

[00:05:16]>> Okay. What was he yelling at you about?

[00:05:18]>> Uh, is that my sister? Because I broken up the tussle with them earlier.

[00:05:22]>> So, you would have noticed as an example, he was just the minimizer yelling at me. So, how strong is yelling? Well, it's stronger than talking, speaking. So, yelling, which is not on the scale of um he he also used enraged, didn't he? I think he said he was enraged, past tense.

[00:05:52]But notice um there's no action attached to the emotional feeling. When asked to describe what happened, he gave us the emotional state of the victim rather than actually telling us what happened.

[00:06:05]Do you see how it's subtle and you have to be paying attention, but if you're given the emotional state of somebody when you've asked the person what happened there, there's avoidance there.

[00:06:20]And so we would note avoidance didn't answer the question. And these are deceptive markers which by each by itself means nothing alone each individual flag doesn't convict but together once we have clusters and superclusters we might have enough and when I say convict I don't mean to show guilt but enough to show us that there is likely to be deception in this statement there excuse me there is likely to be an element of construction language rather than genuine memory. And when the brain has to construct, the language is slightly different than when the brain gives you memory recall.

[00:07:08]Because with memory recall, all the bridges and the causal words, the reasons why, the becausees, the sos, the sinces, the therefors, they don't have to be built on the fly, which when you're making something up or using your imagination, you have to construct um and connect all the words together. It's more energy.

[00:07:32]And so because the brain is economical and always looking for that balance, the use of certain word groups deplete in construction versus memory recall.

[00:07:46]Isn't that interesting? And that along with the skills that the FBI's behavioral analysis unit have been working on now for decades with their forensic linguistics uh expertise, we are able to construct both a qualitative and a quantitative analysis of somebody's statement.

[00:08:13]So here uh and by the way as you as we go through the analysis you'll be um you'll be amazed that he was never arrested and charged.

[00:08:23]Um we'll we'll come to a conclusion.

[00:08:26]Anyway, let's not get ahead of ourselves. Let's carry on.

[00:08:29]>> And he told me not to interfere anymore with them or I pay and he came at me with a bat.

[00:08:34]>> Okay. So he showed up in the house with a bat in his hand.

[00:08:37]>> Okay. So >> there was a scuffle earlier with my sister and my niece. My niece got involved >> about earlier meaning earlier this week.

[00:08:45]Earlier this morning this morning before they left.

[00:08:48]>> Before your your wife left.

[00:08:49]>> My sister.

[00:08:50]>> Before your sister left.

[00:08:51]>> Yeah.

[00:08:52]>> Okay. Who lives here with you?

[00:08:53]>> Nobody. I don't live here. My sister lives here and my niece lives here.

[00:08:56]>> And you're just visiting?

[00:08:58]>> I was visiting for the night.

[00:08:59]>> Okay. So, you're over here visiting your sister and your niece?

[00:09:01]>> Yes.

[00:09:02]>> Okay. And there was a tussle between your sister and her husband.

[00:09:05]>> Yes.

[00:09:05]>> And does the husband live here or No, >> no, Houston.

[00:09:08]>> Okay. Is he an ex-husband or just current husband? Uh they're working on that.

[00:09:12]>> Gotcha. So at some point earlier today they get into a some type of domestic >> just this morning then they left and then he came at me.

[00:09:19]>> They left meaning who? Both of parties.

[00:09:22]>> Yeah.

[00:09:22]>> So notice um lots of people are leaving the house but it's all confusing isn't it? And deception loves living in confusion.

[00:09:32]So she left, he left, they left.

[00:09:36]Everybody's leaving. Everybody's left.

[00:09:38]there's an overuse of left and left is often used in language um let's say 25 to 30% of the time when somebody uses the word left especially there are pronouns before it but especially when there's no pronoun before the left there can be an incident behind them or almost if you visualize the door slamming and left.

[00:10:09]There's there's something behind the left. I left. She left. He left.

[00:10:18]Left the house. Do you see? But don't forget 70 75% of the time it means absolutely nothing. Perhaps they were in a rush. Perhaps it was a turn of phrase.

[00:10:31]Perhaps it's an idiom. It's the way that they speak or sometimes speak. or sometimes they wanted to impart the information quickly. All sorts of reasons. The vast majority of the time it's just a word but left can often be used because there is an incident behind it. So we put in a flag. Let's carry on.

[00:10:55]>> My sister took my niece and my nephew.

[00:10:57]>> Okay. So they left.

[00:10:58]>> Create some space for him and then he came at me.

[00:11:00]>> Okay. But did he leave also?

[00:11:02]>> No.

[00:11:02]>> He stayed here.

[00:11:03]>> He stayed. We won't get into it now, but when eliciting information, the less that you can contaminate a witness with your own words, um, and the more you can leave them to answer fully any question rather than interrupt because you yourself want to go in a different direction rather than allowing free narrative, which is a very good way to get the unconscious to give um the amount of material and data that we need to analyze. So elicitation is a subject in its own right. Wherever you can open questions um and don't interrupt.

[00:11:42]>> So you guys are kind of talking in between or what? Who are you?

[00:11:46]>> Who are you?

[00:11:47]>> I'm a neighbor.

[00:11:48]>> No, no, just go back. I appreciate it.

[00:11:50]Thank you, sir.

[00:11:50]>> Thank you.

[00:11:52]>> So you just So it's just you and and uh your brother-in-law.

[00:11:55]>> Yes.

[00:11:56]>> Okay. And kind of go through it. Say something like, "Hey, don't touch my sister or >> what?"

[00:12:02]Yeah.

[00:12:03]>> Okay.

[00:12:04]>> Okay. So, now the suspect has taken a statement from the officer and said, "Yeah, okay. I'll have that."

[00:12:13]May be true and it may not, but under these conditions, a suspect might well might begin taking uh your examples of normal language. So, it's incorrect to do that if you're if we're looking at elicitation skills, which I said we wouldn't, and then I spent the last two minutes on it. Sorry about that.

[00:12:32]>> You picked up the bat.

[00:12:34]>> Where was the bat at?

[00:12:35]>> In the living room.

[00:12:37]>> Okay.

[00:12:37]>> The guy inside me.

[00:12:38]>> No, I haven't got in.

[00:12:47]>> Charles is the husband of the occupants here, but I guess he lives in lives where?

[00:12:55]>> Houston.

[00:12:56]>> You know his date of birth?

[00:12:57]>> No.

[00:12:58]>> From Houston.

[00:12:59]>> Yeah. Is this vehicle here? How did he get here?

[00:13:03]>> Uh, dude here from Texas.

[00:13:05]>> No, that's my sister's car. I think he came in a rental car. I think his sister's in >> You think your sister's in the rental car? Okay.

[00:13:15]>> So, you both So, you get in an argument.

[00:13:17]What is it over?

[00:13:19]>> Well, it was over my sister. He was He was uh getting physical with her and so my niece came out with her bat and then he took the bat away from Wait a minute.

[00:13:25]>> I thought you said your niece left.

[00:13:27]>> She did, but it's before. Okay. So, before before your uh your sister and your niece left, Yeah.

[00:13:34]>> at some point your sister and her husband are arguing.

[00:13:38]>> Yes.

[00:13:38]>> Verbal argument.

[00:13:40]>> And then your niece pulls out a bat.

[00:13:42]>> Well, it wasn't verbal. He was getting close and she came out to defend my sister.

[00:13:47]>> It wasn't verbal. He was getting close.

[00:13:50]So notice that he's not willing to commit to the victim uh actually not having anything more than do you see it's very subtle but the the suspect won't commit because nobody likes to blatantly lie because you can be trapped in a blatant lie. So the brain avoids it. It hints towards it and it wants the listener to complete the information, but he's giving the impression that it wasn't just verbal, but he can't himself verbally commit to that in words, but he he wants the listener to get that impression. And this is this is constant in deception where um they don't complete the message, they skirt towards it, dance around it. So that becomes its own tell in its own right >> with her back.

[00:14:52]>> Your niece?

[00:14:53]>> Yes.

[00:14:53]>> Okay.

[00:14:54]>> And then she poked at him and he took it away.

[00:14:56]>> Okay.

[00:14:58]>> And then I I stepped in and told him they needed to separate.

[00:15:03]>> Right. So then my sister leaves with my niece.

[00:15:06]>> And how long ago did they leave? It's been like an hour, 10 minutes.

[00:15:11]>> 20 minutes maybe. I don't know.

[00:15:12]>> Okay. So not not terribly long.

[00:15:14]>> No, no, no.

[00:15:14]>> Oh, okay.

[00:15:15]>> And then uh and then he's he's coming back at me and he's still got the bat in his eye. What are you doing?

[00:15:24]>> And where are you at? Where are you both?

[00:15:26]>> In the living room.

[00:15:27]>> Okay.

[00:15:27]>> And then I turned around and he hit me in the back of the head with a bat.

[00:15:34]So, I went to my room and got my gun. I always carry it.

[00:15:38]>> You went to your room, meaning the room you're staying in?

[00:15:40]>> Yeah.

[00:15:41]>> Okay. And you brought your brought a gun with you?

[00:15:43]>> Do you always bring a gun?

[00:15:45]>> I have a concealed carry. I always >> Okay.

[00:15:47]>> Just to be safe.

[00:15:48]>> Hi. Who are are you?

[00:15:51]>> Okay. Just stand over there for just a second, guys.

[00:15:54]>> And then uh I told him to put the bat down and he wouldn't. And he came at me again.

[00:16:00]>> And the wife just showed up as well.

[00:16:02]So you told him to put the So where are you at then? Where where are you at now?

[00:16:06]Did you stay in your bedroom?

[00:16:07]>> No.

[00:16:08]>> Okay. Why didn't you stay just in your bedroom? Close the door.

[00:16:12]>> Is that something you didn't think about or?

[00:16:14]>> Didn't even occur to me.

[00:16:16]>> Okay. So, walk me through it. So, you go back in your room.

[00:16:19]>> Didn't even occur to me, he said.

[00:16:22]>> So, I just I just went back to the living room. What is your problem >> with the gun again?

[00:16:26]>> Yes. And I said, I want you to put that back down. And he wouldn't do it. He's like, and he came at me with So he goes to the bedroom, gets his gun, which he always carries, goes back out and asks him what's his problem again after he's already hit me in the head. So I shot him to stop him.

[00:16:52]>> Okay. And then what happened?

[00:16:54]>> That was it.

[00:16:57]>> That was it. So then what happened? That was it. That was it.

[00:17:05]Didn't um try to help him in any in any way.

[00:17:12]Just killed him. That was it.

[00:17:18]>> Okay. Is it Alex or Alexander? Where do you go by? Do >> you go by Alex or Alexander?

[00:17:23]>> Alexander. Okay. Do you live by Are you working now?

[00:17:40]>> Uh, I'm on vacation this week.

[00:17:41]>> Well, what do you do for a living?

[00:17:42]>> Oh, I drive a truck.

[00:17:56]>> Gotcha. The wife just showed up.

[00:17:58]>> Yeah. I'm going to get some tape take off real quick.

[00:18:02]>> Think that for a second. Where's the weapon at now?

[00:18:04]>> Uh it's in the bedroom.

[00:18:05]>> You So after you shot him, you put it back in the room or >> Yeah, I went back to the bedroom to get my phone.

[00:18:10]>> Okay. And what did you do with your phone?

[00:18:12]>> That's uh right here.

[00:18:14]>> As an aside, notice how the gun has become the weapon now that it has fired a lethal shot.

[00:18:23]So we note when there's a change of language. It happened to be the officer that used the change of language. But um another example might be uh my car broke down and then the tow truck turned up and took the vehicle away. So my car had become the vehicle after it had um broken down and gone away and the gun has become a weapon after it has killed somebody. So, a change of language can often uh show a change of um circumstances or a change of language can also show a change of psychological state.

[00:18:58]>> Okay. And then what did you do once you put your gun back?

[00:19:01]>> Um grabbed your phone.

[00:19:03]>> I cleaned my uh clean my head up >> after you Was he laying there in the living room?

[00:19:08]>> Okay. So, he cleaned his head. Cleaned his head. That's interesting, isn't it?

[00:19:16]cleaned cleaned I cleaned my head.

[00:19:23]What did he do afterwards after you've just shot and killed him? I cleaned my head. That's what was important to him straight afterwards.

[00:19:37]And yet we don't see an enormous blood injury where you have to clean your head, do we? And cleaning has sometimes elements of uh privacy or um safety where you can lock the bathroom door.

[00:20:01]Uh sometimes it's an example of abuse.

[00:20:05]Other times cleaning to wash away perceived guilt.

[00:20:10]all sorts of reasons where cleaning can come into a statement. Um, which it's sometimes worth examining. So, he's cleaning his head.

[00:20:20]>> Laying there still and it just took me a minute to compose myself.

[00:20:23]I mean, I was just shaking and then I called.

[00:20:26]>> Gotcha. Okay.

[00:20:30]We'll call 17 log. Uh, >> standby.

[00:20:35]I don't have engine uh 2811 and then uh Chandler rescue. I don't have any water, so give me a second.

[00:20:44]>> No worries.

[00:20:56]>> Okay, let's look at the analysis in some detail.

[00:21:01]So, where did we get to?

[00:21:07]So the interview runs down the page in full. The officer questions and Alex Cox answers taken word for word. Under each answer are the findings. The strongest third uh first rather a family scuffle before everyone there.

[00:21:30]Then Charles attacking Alex after alone.

[00:21:34]The join between them is the moment the others leave and that join empties the house.

[00:21:42]We've got a time problem and a people present problem. The house has to be empty for the rest of the story to work.

[00:21:51]The contradictions the officer keeps hitting are the join showing through.

[00:21:56]Did you notice the officer in confusion in his elicitation technique kept hitting walls and barriers of confusion between who's there, who left, when were they there, but you said your niece left before. There's this confusion barrier because deception is occurring.

[00:22:25]Notice that there is a real hole at the center as well. He never gives one reason Charles would attack him.

[00:22:34]Not in reality. He dances around it.

[00:22:39]Charles came to pick up his son. That is the only purpose Alex puts in his mouth.

[00:22:46]Then in Alex's telling, this man tries to beat him to death with a bat.

[00:22:53]Between the errand and the killing, there is no motive re really given other than the niece and the mother having a bit of a scuffle and he told me not to interfere or I would pay future talking about my sister. Notice here talking is soft, isn't it?

[00:23:24]This isn't shouting about my sister. This is talking about my sister. And those are reasons for a sharp word, not for a man to swing a bat at his brother-in-law's skull.

[00:23:41]A real victim of an unprovoked attack cannot stop trying to explain it. I don't know why he just snapped. He'd been drinking. He always hated me. The mind reaches for the cause because the attack makes no sense without one. But Alex never reaches the blank where the reason should be is the mark. And on its no on its own it is only a question.

[00:24:44]So this is the confusing part. Charles came to pick up his son.

[00:24:51]The sister had already taken him to school.

[00:24:56]His reason is gone. Yet he stayed.

[00:25:01]The others fled the dangerous man.

[00:25:05]that Alex stayed alone with him by choice. Goes into his bedroom and fetches the gun. The story it it doesn't fit together smoothly, does it? And the officer struggled with it.

[00:25:25]If you take five of his own statements and lay them end to end, Charles came to pick up his son. The sister had already taken the boy to school. So Charles's reason to be there was gone. Yet he stayed. Everyone else cleared the house to get away from the dangerous man, and the one grown man who could have left with them stayed alone with him instead.

[00:25:52]Yeah, it never the loop never closes and it will not close. This is the problem the officer had.

[00:26:15]Sometimes in forensic linguistics we also look at how many words are used before the incident, how many words during the incident and how many words after the incident. And typically we might see 25% before that's the preamble, 50% actually what happened and 25% what happened afterwards. And where we see a big skew um uh you know perhaps um 80% preamble. In other words, the person's waffling on refusing to get to the point. They're trying to avoid it.

[00:26:48]Um and then uh you know 5% what happened and then the other remaining what happened afterwards. Once we see huge skews out of normality, that itself can also become a tell.

[00:27:05]And we see lots of change of pronoun and article with the weapon, the bat.

[00:27:20]So he said, "I don't know." The officer said, "What happened today? How did it get to this?"

[00:27:28]And his reply was, "I don't know." He was enraged.

[00:27:34]"I don't know."

[00:27:36]So very often this immediate denial can be a deceptive marker, but it can also be trauma.

[00:27:49]He was enraged.

[00:27:52]But this is the how did it get to this?

[00:27:58]What happened today?

[00:28:01]I don't know could be assigned to this question. How did it get to the to this?

[00:28:06]He was enraged. So there is a bit of a pass here.

[00:28:12]How did it get to this? He but he did choose to state his emotional state rather than actually answer the question. I'm not sure about the past.

[00:28:21]What do you think?

[00:28:28]There's no fear from the suspect in the statement and it's a fairly long statement for a body cam.

[00:28:43]No, no words of fear. And this is someone who had to fear enough to kill somebody in self-defense. And yet we don't have any linguistic markers of fear.

[00:28:58]And the only verdict is on the dead man's state of mind, his emotional state.

[00:29:15]So we have removal of the act and although we don't have a much of a baseline possible construction function.

[00:29:39]Remember talking is too soft because he was enraged but talking.

[00:29:47]The mind when it gaslights and deceives will often make errors in the language choice because part of the language production which starts in the conceptualizer that's you thinking about what you're going to say and then it moves to another part of the brain called the formulator.

[00:30:08]And the formulator, if it's taking from memory, it constructs the word groups in a slightly different way than if it is making it up. And it gets even more complex, which I won't go in today because one part of the brain makes the smaller words, the pronouns and the articles, and another part of the brain makes the larger words, which are the construct words, which put the meaning into the sentence. So, it's complex, but we're beginning to really understand it enough that we can take a statement and see where we have the differences um and changes of language which uh tell us that we should put that we should note it and put in a flag. And then of course once and the principle is once we get lots of uh flags we should be able to construct a um likely truth around that.

[00:31:17]Remember that this isn't a lie detector.

[00:31:22]We are if we're detecting anything we are detecting source state. In other words, is it memory recall, genuine episodic memory encoded on the brain, or is it construction? And bear in mind, if it's construction, construction doesn't necessarily mean deception. There are other reasons. Imagination, excellent reason to see construction in language. Doesn't necessarily mean it's deception, does it?

[00:31:54]um and also false confessions which we're working on at the moment and the three types of false confession of which we think we can identify two of the three and the third um is confounding because I can't think of a way to establish the third type but anyway let's not get sidetracked on that I think what we'll do actually is we'll make this a two-part part and we'll come back to part two tomorrow where we'll now go through in far more detail the actual sentences which are said and analyze um uh at a more macro um and micro level um on the actual sentences. Okay, let's um do subscribe if you haven't already for part two and I look forward to chat with you in the comments as always and thank you so much everyone for supporting the Veroscope channel and for those who have joined as a member. It really really is appreciated. Um the channel's quite young will be coming up to a year old shortly. Um, so, uh, haven't we all done well as a group? Near nearly 18,000 now.

[00:33:19]So, thank you and chat to you in the comments.