World2 min(s) read
Published 15:10 22 May 2026 GMT
A criminal lawyer who has worked on more than 30 murder cases has revealed the one thing that can immediately raise red flags when police interview suspects.
Julian Hayes, a criminal lawyer and High Court advocate, explained that inconsistencies in a suspect’s story can quickly become a major issue for investigators, especially once phone records and timelines are examined.
From fingerprints on the murder weapon to damning CCTV footage that places a suspect at the scene of the crime, there are many glaringly obvious ways police can ascertain if someone has committed the heinous act. Still, Hayes has pointed towards one particular thing that can give away someone’s guilt or not, away from the obvious...
Speaking exclusively to VT.co about the kinds of mistakes suspects make, Hayes said: “Inconsistencies in their story about what they were doing at the time — whether it was an alibi, or whether it is, ‘I was there, but I wasn’t involved’. So there are a lot of inconsistencies in what they’re saying.”
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When asked what kinds of inconsistencies stand out most, Hayes explained that every case is different, but timing errors are often a giveaway.
“Well, it’s very difficult to generalize in that way because every case is different,” he said.
He was then asked: “Would you see timings not lining up?”
Hayes replied: “Well, things like timings, things like people who they were with or not with. They might actually say, ‘Well, a certain television programme was on at that time, or a particular event was on’ and it might not actually have been on.”
But according to Hayes, modern technology has made it even harder for suspects to maintain false alibis.
“The other big giveaway is once you get the telephone evidence from the police, when they’ve had a look at the telephone evidence, and they discover that your client’s telephone was actually somewhere different from where your client says he was — so cell site evidence is one of the biggest giveaways.”
Cell site analysis allows investigators to estimate where a mobile phone was located at a particular time by examining which phone masts it connected to. The evidence has become a crucial tool in criminal investigations, particularly in murder and serious assault cases.
Having dealt with dozens of murder trials throughout his legal career, Hayes suggested that while every investigation is unique, stories that don’t fully add up are often impossible to ignore once evidence starts piling up.
