How to Collect Witness Statements and Depositions Correctly & Safely

Extending from digital amplification to direct human-source intelligence, this module trains DIY Detective™ participants in the disciplined art of collecting voluntary, court-usable witness depositions and sworn affidavits—but grounded in the visual intelligence methods that define this academy. You will learn to approach witnesses safely, explain rights clearly, and document statements rigorously through written transcripts, audio recordings (with permission), and attached exhibits—but the breakthrough methodology taught here centers on hand-drawing witness accounts as they're given. By manually sketching timelines, relationship maps, and scene overlays in real-time during interviews using pencil and paper, you capture spatial and sequential details that verbal accounts and typed transcripts alone miss. This analog-first documentation process forces you to listen deeper, ask clarifying questions about positions and distances, and create visual records that make witness testimony spatially coherent and harder to dismiss. The act of hand-drawing what someone describes—asking “where exactly?” and “who was between them?”—transforms passive transcription into active investigation that reveals contradictions, gaps, and overlooked details institutions routinely ignore.

Most assassination attempts and completed assassinations hinge on witness memory that degrades over time or remains suppressed due to fear, intimidation, or institutional indifference. Official investigations often fail to pursue these statements aggressively, citing resource constraints or political sensitivity, and when they do collect statements, they rely on text-only reports that strip away the spatial and relational context witnesses actually experienced. This true crime investigation workshop bridges civilian intelligence training with real-world investigative training by teaching you to collect affidavits ethically and persistently—partnering with licensed private investigators when needed, preparing legal forms, assessing risks—but always supplementing typed statements with hand-drawn visual documentation created during the interview itself. When you hand-sketch a witness's description of where people stood, how they moved, what they could see from their position, you're not decorating testimony—you're extracting investigative intelligence that typed reports systematically fail to capture. These hand-drawn supplements become powerful accountability tools because they show your work: prosecutors and journalists can see that you asked specific spatial questions, documented positions precisely, and created records that can be verified or challenged based on actual geometry rather than vague verbal descriptions.

Even years after documented attempts, time can work in favor of persistent civilian investigators equipped with visual intelligence methods: fear dissipates, loyalties shift, institutional protection erodes, and information circulates through networks—secrets shared with one person rarely stay contained forever, especially in assassination and attempted-assassination cases with no statute of limitations. These delayed windows often yield overlooked details from neighborhoods, former associates, or peripheral witnesses who now feel safe speaking—but only if someone is trained to document their accounts through both legal affidavit standards and hand-drawn visual intelligence that captures what they actually saw, not just what they can articulate in words. When authorities abandon cases or obstruct justice through deliberate indifference, civilian-collected depositions paired with hand-drawn documentation become powerful tools for accountability that institutions cannot easily dismiss as “hearsay” or “unverified statements.”