Welcome to English as a Second Language podcast number 974.
Talking about old crimes.
This is English as a Second Language podcast episode 974.
I'm your host, Dr Jeff McQuillan, coming to you from the Center for Educational Development in beautiful Los Angeles, California.
Our website is eslpod.com.
Go there and become a member of ESL Podcast and download a learning guide for this episode.
This episode is a dialogue between Paul and Della about vocabulary related to crimes, especially old crimes.
Let's get started.
What are you watching?
I'm watching a really good show about cold cases.
They take unsolved crimes from decades ago and reconstruct them, trying to solve them once and for all.
But after all this time, isn't the trail cold?
How do they solve the crimes with no new leads?
They go over the witness testimony and use scientific methods that didn't exist many years ago.
Isn't there a statute of limitations for most crimes?
Yes, but not for murder.
I really doubt a TV show can solve crimes that the police couldn't crack.
Are any crimes really ever solved on the show?
Yes of course.
How?
Through crack investigative methods or a keen eye for detail?
Deathbed Confessions.
Ah.
Paul begins our dialogue by asking Della, What are you watching?
Presumably, we can guess, that is, that Della is watching television.
Della says...
I'm watching a really good show about cold cases.
A cold case is a criminal investigation that has not been solved and is not, at this time, trying to be solved by the police department.
The police may investigate a crime for many months, sometimes even many years.
And then they say okay, there's no sense trying to find out who did this, because we haven't been able to find out so far.
This crime then becomes a cold case, a cold investigation.
It's cold because it's so old.
Maybe that's why I feel cold more often now than I used to.
Well, Della is watching a television show about crime, about cold cases.
She says they take unsolved crimes from decades ago and reconstruct them.
To solve.
SOLVE a crime is to figure out who is responsible for the crime, who committed the crime, we would say.
To solve a crime is to find the person who is guilty of the crime.
An unsolved case or an unsolved crime is one where the police have not figured out who the guilty person is.
Cold cases are always unsolved crimes.
Della says these that are being discussed on the television show are from decades ago.
A decade, D-E-C-A-D-E, is a period of 10 years.
So several decades ago would mean 20, 30, 40, maybe even 50 years ago.
A long time ago.
To reconstruct something is to build it again.
To construct is to build something, to assemble something.
To reconstruct would be to take something that has perhaps fallen apart and build it again.
However, here the verb really means to try to figure out everything that happened that is related to the crime.
To reconstruct a crime would be to try to figure out exactly who committed the crime and all the different circumstances surrounding the crime.
The television show tries to solve these unsolved crimes once and for all.
Once and for all is a phrase meaning that...
Once you do it, you won't have to do it again.
It's the last time you'll have to look at this issue or try to do this thing.
It will be completed.
It will be finished.
Paul says, but after all this time, isn't the trail cold?
A trail T-R-A-I-L is in this case leads to a series of clues that are used to try to solve a crime.
A clue, C-L-U-E, is evidence that indicates the answer to a problem or the solution to a problem.
Paul is saying that the trail is cold on these cold cases, meaning that It's very difficult to try to follow the clues to figure out where the evidence is leading you.
He says, how do they solve the crimes with no new leads?
A lead, L-E-A-D, is the same as a clue.
It's a piece of information that gives you some idea about what happened, that helps you solve the mystery or the crime.
Stella says they go over the witness testimony and use scientific methods that didn't exist many years ago.
A witness.
W-I-T-N-E-S-S is someone who sees something, often something that is criminal or something that has gone wrong.
You could also have a witness, however, to, for example, your marriage.
In the United States.
In most places, if you get married you have to sign an official government document.
And there needs to be at least two people who witness you sign the document, who say yes, this person signed the document.
That's also, of course, something that can go wrong.
That is to say, getting married.
But normally a witness is someone who sees a crime or sees something bad happen.
Testimony, T-E-S-T-I-M-O-N-Y, is...
A statement or statements that someone makes about what happened, about what they know about a certain topic.
Witness testimony would be information that was provided by witnesses to some crime about what they saw or what they heard or what they know.
Della also says the television show uses scientific methods.
Scientific methods would be techniques or ways of doing something that would help you figure out who committed the crime, using perhaps some special analysis, perhaps chemicals or some sort of laboratory analysis that would help you figure out who the criminal was.
A lot of times, especially nowadays, there is DNA evidence, genetic evidence that is left at the place where the crime was committed, what we call the scene S-C-E-N-E of the crime.
Sometimes those kinds of methods can be used to solve old criminal cases as well.
Paul says, A statute, S-T-A-T-U-T-E, is the same as a law.
Statute of limitations refers to a law that says that if you are not caught for a crime, if the police do not catch you for a crime after a certain number of years, then you cannot be arrested.
So if you do something wrong that isn't very serious and the police don't find out about it until many years later.
Usually they can't do anything about it because the statute of limitations says the police have only so many years to find people guilty of these kinds of crimes.
Murder however, when you kill someone typically does not have any statute of limitations placed on it.
That is.
It doesn't matter how long ago it was.
The police can still arrest you and put you in prison.
That's what Della says here, that for murder, there is not a statute of limitations.
Paul says...
I really doubt a TV show can solve crimes that the police couldn't crack.
Paul doesn't think the TV shows can figure out who the criminal was if the police couldn't figure it out.
The verb to crack means to solve a difficult problem, especially to solve a crime.
Paul then asks Della, are any crimes really ever solved on the show?
Della says, yes, of course.
Paul asks, how?
Through crack investigative methods or a keen eye to detail.
Investigative methods would be ways that you try to get information about something, in this case about who committed the crime.
Crack, C-R-A-C-K, here is used as an adjective.
Just a second ago, we used it as a verb, meaning to solve a crime.
As an adjective...
Crack can mean very sharp, very smart, very good at what you are doing.
I am a crack basketball player.
I can play basketball better than anyone else in my house.
Better than my wife, that is.
That is one possible way of using crack as an adjective.
Crack investigative methods would be very intelligent or smart ways of investigating a crime.
A keen eye for detail means the ability to notice small things that other people perhaps would not notice.
A keen eye for detail is the ability to see things that others cannot see.
Paul is asking if these are the ways that the television show solves crimes.
However, Della says that that's not how they solve the crimes when they do solve crimes.
They do it, according to Della, by using deathbed confessions.
A confession is a statement admitting that you did something wrong.
Sometimes when the police catch a person who committed the crime, the person will just confess.
They will say, okay, yes, I did it.
Confession comes from the verb to confess, C-O-N-F-E-S-S.
A deathbed.
Confession is when you admit to doing something wrong and, as you are dying, your death bed is literally the place, the bed where you are lying.
As you are dying and right before you die you say oh yes, i murdered this person or i did this terrible thing many years ago.
Of course it doesn't take any investigative work by the police If someone confesses to a crime and Della is saying here that the television show doesn't really solve any crimes unless someone has confessed to them.
Now let's listen to the dialogue, this time at a normal speed.
What are you watching?
I'm watching a really good show about cold cases.
They take unsolved crimes from decades ago and reconstruct them, trying to solve them once and for all.
But after all this time, isn't the trail cold?
How do they solve the crimes with no new leads?
They go over the witness testimony and use scientific methods that didn't exist many years ago.
Isn't there a statute of limitations for most crimes?
I really doubt a TV show can solve crimes that the police couldn't crack.
Are any crimes really ever solved on the show?
How?
Through crack investigative methods or a keen eye for detail?
Ah.
I'd like to thank our crack script writer, Dr. Lucy Say, for her hard work.
From Los Angeles, California, I'm Jeff McQuillan.
Thank you for listening.
Come back and listen to us again right here on ESL Podcast.
English as a Second Language Podcast is written and produced by Dr Lucy Say, hosted by Dr Jeff McQuillan.
Copyright 2014 by the Center for Educational Development.
