The Svengali Squad

The evening news on July 15 stunned the country: a busload of 26 children from the small California farming community of Chowchilla had disappeared. The youngsters and their driver had been kidnaped by three masked men brandishing pistols. The victims were driven to a gravel quarry 100 miles away and forced into an abandoned trailer truck buried 6 ft. underground. Sixteen hours later the captives managed to dig themselves out and were soon rescued. The FBI quickly interrogated them but found no answer to the question: Who were the abductors?

To help crack the case, the bureau called in Dr. William S. Kroger, an authority on medical hypnosis. Kroger sat with Chowchilla Bus Driver Ed Ray in a Fresno motel room and told him to fix his eyes on a spot on the wall and breathe deeply. Twenty minutes later Ray was under hypnosis. Dr. Kroger then led him through a playback of the kidnaping. The ploy worked. The driver was able to recall all but one digit of the license plate on the kidnapers' white van. The information helped authorities track down three suspects who go on trial later this month.

Successful Tool. Though the FBI says it uses hypnosis sparingly, mesmerizing consenting witnesses is on the increase as a police investigative tool. The Los Angeles Police Department has worked with the technique since 1970. Noting its success, Psychologist Martin Reiser, head of the L.A.P.D.'S behavioral-sciences services, decided last year to set up a special hypnosis unit, the first in the U.S. Kroger and nine other medical hypnotists trained 14 L.A.P.D. officers in the technique, which dates back at least to ancient Egypt. Says L.A.P.D. Captain Richard Sandstrom, who is currently evaluating the work of the force's new Svengali Squad: "Hypnosis gives utterly fantastic results."

The Israeli National Police Force, which set up its own hypnosis unit in 1972, agrees. Its team of trained hypnotists has solved 25 cases and advanced the investigations in 60 more. When terrorists bombed the Nahariya-Haifa bus in 1973, police questioned the driver about suspicious passengers. He could not remember anything until Captain Yshaya Horowitz, head of the hypnosis squad, sent him into a medium-depth trance and asked him to relive his workday. The driver eventually described a suspicious rider with a brown paper parcel under his arm. Working on this lead, Israeli cops quickly collared the Arab bombers, who confessed to the bombing.

The L.A.P.D. reports that hypnosis has been used in some 70 cases. In one, a woman who had been high on drugs and alcohol at the time could recall no details of the murder of her boy friend, which she had witnessed. Figuring that her perceptions would be "similar to pictures taken by a camera lens with gauze over it," Reiser was dubious about trying hypnosis. He was wrong. In her trance the woman unerringly ticked off the killer's physical features and his clothing--right down to the stripes in his pants and the dots in his tie. A police artist put together a composite drawing that led to the killer's arrest.

The L.A.P.D. unit's approach to a witness is simple and direct. The subject is offered a comfortable chair, and a two-man team explains to him that a witness cannot be hypnotized against his will. (When one scared subject blurted that "the devil will come out of me if I'm hypnotized," he was excused.) "Motivation is the most important thing," says Sandstrom. "If they are willing to cooperate and you help them to relax, then it is very easy."

Interrogation by hypnosis is not infallible. Mesmerized witnesses can fantasize, make mistakes, even lie. But handled with care, hypnosis does offer leads. "We take the information at face value and then verify it," says L.A.P.D. hypnotist Lieut. Ed Henderson. It is up to a judge to decide whether to admit testimony of witnesses whose memories have been jogged by hypnosis.

To head off charges of quackery, the L.A.P.D. is now organizing a "forensic hypnosis society," a professional organization for police hypnotists--complete with a code of ethics. Says Captain Sandstrom: "We want to make hypnosis respectable--after all it came out of the dark ages."

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