Murderer of little boy tried to 'help' grieving family but a simple head-shake gave him away

A new Investigation Discovery documentary series tells the eerie story of a manipulative murderer who infiltrated the broken home of his victim and gained their trust after claiming their child’s life.

English convicted murderer Darren Vickers is the subject of ID’s “Faking it: Tears Of A Crime,” a series that focuses on how he gave himself away as guilty of his crime with his body language, Daily Mail reported.

The bus driver was originally known as the last person who saw 8-year-old Jamie Lavis, who disappeared in 1997 and was later found dead. Read more on our Twitter account @amomama_usa

The case shocked the community of Openshaw, Greater Manchester, UK, and many people was involved in the search for Lavis, including, strangely enough, Vickers himself, who became an outspoken supporter of the child’s parents.

Whether Vickers was overcompensating for his criminal act by pretending to be concerned by the fate of this innocent boy or acting out of pure cruelty and sadism, his involvement in the investigation ultimately led to his arrest.

Vickers even managed to gain the trust of Lavis’ parents, so much that he ended up moving in with them, and even borrowed the couple’s room and bed during his stay.

His schemes put Vickers in the position to make declarations on TV on behalf of the devastated parents, who were tricked into believing that the stranger was acting out of kindness.

But thanks to this exposure on Vickers’ part, the authorities became suspicious of him and this lead to his conviction to a life in prison in 1999, a sentence he is serving to this date.

The police watched Vickers’ videos closely, and subtle signs on his behavior made clear to a trained eye that he was lying when he talked about the events in question, making him the first suspect.

Cliff Lansley, the body language expert who helped unmask Vickers, shared details of how the murderer gave himself away by shaking his head and avoiding naming the victim.

“The head shake is tiny but its a gift to a body language analyst because those tiny gestures are below consciousness and they leak the contradiction to the statement he is making.”

-Cliff Lansley, Daily Mail, November 8, 2018.

As Vickers will be eligible for parole in five years, the local authorities are expecting that the documentary helps to influence the system to prevent Vickers from walking away from prison.

“Darren Vickers should never be released. He will be a danger to children,” considers Roy Rainford, who led the investigation.

Even if this sounds like an incredible detective story from a police procedural fictional series, the use of body language analysis by the police is common, and it is a practice completely backed by science.

Former FBI agent Joe Navarro wrote “What Every BODY is saying” to shed light on how law enforcers use body language as criteria to solve criminal cases.

According to Navarro, evolution made us capable to recognize signs of anxiety in others to help us recognize the proximity of danger and communicate it to others with our involuntary reactions.

This is an unconscious code and there is a repertoire of gestures that give any person away when he or she is lying, and anybody can learn how to read them.

Touching one’s face, blinking too frequently, compressing one’s lips, playing with one’s hair, contorting one’s hands or rubbing them together, yawning excessively, are some of the signs that show somebody is lying.

To know this and use it properly might help us read signs of danger when we are dealing with people we are supposed to trust and who have access to vulnerable individuals and can be a treat to them.

Niels Hoegel, for instance, is a nurse who used her position and reputation as a health professional to commit a shocking number of murders in what is considered the world's largest post-war serial killing spree.

Hoegel was already serving a life sentence in prison when she admitted to having killed over 100 patients in a twisted “game” he played out of “boredom.”

As the 41-year-old confessed, he injected lethal doses of drugs in his patients to later try to resuscitate them, which apparently granted him a sense of “euphoria.”

It is shocking to think that Hoegel could maintain his facade as a man whose purpose was helping others for years before his hideous acts were discovered. It certainly make us wonder who can we really trust.