How many of your cold cases were solved through the use of DNA evidence? None. Not one....

Tom Endler: How many of your cold cases were solved through the use of DNA evidence? Jim Warner Wallace: None. Not one. That's, uh, often popular on TV, but our department's never had the good fortune of solving a cold case with DNA. Tom Endler: Well, how do most of these cases get solved? Jim Warner Wallace: Often by examining eyewitness claims, witness claims that were made many years earlier, even though often our witnesses are now deceased. Tom Endler: Forgive my ignorance, Mr. Wallace, but how is that possible? Jim Warner Wallace: Well, we have a number of techniques we can use to test the reliability of an eyewitness, including something called forensic statement analysis. That's a discipline where we scrutinize the statements of eyewitnesses and look at what they choose to minimize, what they choose to emphasize, what they omit altogether, how they expand time or contract time. And when we examine these kinds of eyewitness accounts, we can usually tell who's lying and who's telling the truth, and even who the guilty party is. Tom Endler: And did you apply this skill set anytime outside of your official capacity? Jim Warner Wallace: Yes, I applied my expertise to the death of Jesus at the hands of the Romans, and I actually looked at the gospels as I would any other set of forensic statements. Within a matter of months, I determined that the four gospels, written from different perspectives, contained the eyewitness accounts about the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Tom Endler: And did you consider that the four accounts might be part of a conspiracy, designed to promote belief in a fledgling faith? Jim Warner Wallace: Yeah, you have to consider conspiracies when assessing eyewitness accounts, but successful conspiracies typically involve the fewest number of people. It's a lot easier for two people to lie and keep a secret than it is for 20. And that's really the problem with the conspiracy theories related to the apostles in the 1st century. There are just far too many of them trying to hold this conspiracy for far too long a period of time. And far worse, they're experiencing pressure like no other, unimaginable pressure. Every one of these folks was tortured and died for what they claimed to see, and none of them ever recanted their story. So the idea that, um, this is a conspiracy in the 1st century is just really unreasonable. Instead, what I see in the gospels is something I call unintended eyewitness support statements.