The first time I met Jesse I went up to his home. I’d heard about his story and Colonel Shaffer was with me. We went to check the veracity of the person we were speaking with. And generally what you do is you begin with questions to set the scene so that the witness has confidence. So that they can gain their confidence, you let them know that they are in control so that they can stop the conversation any time that they want. They can kick me out of the house. We had a video camera, he could stop the video. He could refuse to answer any question he could ask me any question that he wanted.
So I had Jesse set the scene. During the scene setting he mentioned something to me. It was an offhand comment. He was telling me about his jobs and he said that there was a time there when he had some difficulty and then he went on setting the scene. I knew what he was referring to but he did not know that I knew. Jesse did not know what I knew about his background…
…I said Jesse why don’t you tell me about that little difficulty that you had. He said what do you mean? It’s about your past. He said, what do you want to know? I said the truth, that he’d been arrested, that he’d served some time, that for a while there in his life he wanted to do things his way. That he violated probation, that he went back up and when he saw his first daughter born he decided to turn around his life and he’s been sober since then.
I said, you know this is going to come down on your head. If you step forward, this is going to come down your head. There will be people who will not be concerned about what you saw they will be more concerned about trying to destroy you, because they don’t like what you saw.
And I asked him if he told his three daughters that their father had been in prison and he said he hadn’t. They didn’t know. Now they will. Now they will. This man is telling the truth…. he is a truth teller.