Nearly four years since her arrest in July 2013 for felony aggravated battery against a child, Dorothy Varallo-Speckeen stands in late spring 2017 outside her East Moline home that she and Jennifer Schafer share. Credit: Krista Johnson/IowaWatch


Dorothy Varallo-Speckeen says she thought she was being called to the Moline, Illinois, police station in July 2013 to help solve a child abuse case. The then-22-year-old former Iowa City, Iowa, woman was surprised to find out that police suspected her of breaking both legs of a 15-month-old toddler.

Her case reveals how a controversial method of police interrogation called the Reid Technique works, and how critics say it sometimes produces false confessions โ€” something Varallo-Speckeen says she delivered in that July 2013 police interview.

Dorothy Varallo-Speckeen in a July 24, 2013, Moline, Illinois, police interrogation. Credit: Screen shot from Moline, Illinois, police interview video

โ€œI think we will make a great stride in reducing the rate of false confessions when we complete the move away from controversial techniques like Reid,โ€ said Dean Strang, a Madison, Wisconsin, lawyer who has become known as one of the defense attorneys featured in the Netflix program โ€œMaking a Murderer.โ€ That program tells the story of Steven Avery, a Wisconsin man convicted of a sex assault he didnโ€™t commit.

Strang and others speak in this podcast of an IowaWatch Connection radio report that digs into the investigative method. The podcast includes portions of the recording of Varallo-Speckeenโ€™s interrogation. The IowaWatch Connection is a weekly program featuring IowaWatch reporting. It is aired on 20 radio stations each weekend.

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