Killer’s guilt revealed by TV appeal blinking

A KILLER gave away his guilt by blinking too much, an expert has revealed.

Mike Gifford-hull made an emotional television appeal for his missing wife Kirsi to come home in September 2005, just over a year before he was found guilty of her murder and jailed for at least 17 years.

Now, a 26-second clip of his performance has been analysed by body-language expert Cliff Lansley for the programme, Faking It: Tears of a Crime, to be broadcast this Friday.

In it, Gifford-hull sheds crocodile tears as he speaks directly to his missing wife and says: “It’s your birthday on Monday. Please come home.”

Lansley watches the rapid eye movement in the footage and says: “What’s very interesting is the blink rate that’s going on here. I counted 72 blinks in 26 seconds. The average blink rate is five or six times a minute. We’ve got almost three times a second.

“We expect the blink rate to increase when you’re thinking and you’re performing to a camera, but this is highly unusual. So, you can almost hear the cogs working inside his head, to try to portray a story across to the camera that’s plausible and credible and believable.”

Lansley, director of the Emotional Intelligence Academy, who trains US Department of Homeland Security staff in how to detect terror suspects at airports, adds: “Seventy-two blinks is highly unusual. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that before.”