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declined to pursue expensive
radioactive isotope investigations or carbon dating—which were typically reserved for more recent cases or for anything of criminal consequence.
The case of the Panaro River skull was opened and closed almost immediately. Beduschi didn’t give it another thought. But three years later, that human bone found a few hundred feet from the cemetery would turn up
again. This time, in a story of anguish, tears, and death.
“My children weren’t the only ones to be taken away,” she told me. “Between 1997 and 1998, in Massa Finalese and Mirandola, social services took away fourteen . . . no, wait, fifteen . . . actually, sixteen children. All
from families accused of the same things.”
Bishop ended up, her hands tied behind her back, after a Salem judge condemned her to death.
What all these experts seemed to overlook was that the children’s stories could have been contaminated in some way.
what we believe with all our hearts, is not necessarily the truth.”
their subconscious instinctively expels the memories, freezing them and storing them inside the brain as though in a safe. The victim then forgets them, but only superficially, because in the meantime the trauma still has a deep effect on the person’s cognitive system.
Dr. Ceci believed that the simple repetition of the same question could destabilize a child, insinuating doubt in their mind and leading to a small mnemonic short circuit that activates the imagination, which attempts to compensate for the missing memory.
A legal affair that ruined entire families. A moving story that turned out to be an incredible case of psychological contagion.
