Richard O. Arther

May 20, 1928 - July 5, 2007

By Gordon H. Barland

Dick Arther, one of the historical giants in the polygraph world, died suddenly on July 5th of heart failure at the age of 79 while on vacation in the mountains of Montana.

After graduating with high honors with a degree in police administration from Michigan State University in 1951, he was the seventh person to study under the tutelage of John E. Reid in Chicago. Reid's school in Chicago was six months long and included an in-house internship. After graduating in 1952, he became a staff examiner with Reid & Associates. John asked him to open an east coast branch, so in 1953 Dick moved to New York City where he opened the city's first full time polygraph suite. He eventually decided to open his own school, but he believed most police departments could ill afford to lose officers for six months of training. The nation's oldest polygraph school, the Keeler Institute in Milwaukee, had a six week curriculum. In 1958 he severed his relationship with John E. Reid over the issue of how long it takes to train a polygraphist. He opened his own polygraph office, Scientific Lie Detection. He and Cleve Backster (who left the Keeler Institute to partner with Dick, and who later left to found his own school) co-founded the nation's third polygraph school, The National Training Center, with a six week curriculum. Still in operation today, the National Training Center is now the oldest continuously operating polygraph school in the world, currently being run by Dick's daughter Cathy, whom he trained as a polygraphist in 1975 and who joined him full-time in 1985.

In the years following his initial education by John Reid in how to distinguish between the behavior of truthful and deceptive examinees, Dick became a very astute observer of human behavior. He was the epitome of the clinical polygraphist, who read people as carefully as he read charts. He developed a series of procedures designed to elicit differential behavior from the guilty and innocent. In conjunction with that, he developed a highly structured pretest interview which students memorized word for word. He taught that by the end of the properly conducted pretest interview, the examiner should be able to predict with near perfect accuracy how the test would turn out. He was also a highly skilled interrogator, and in 1959 was the senior author of the book, Interrogation for Investigators.

In 1960, Dick obtained a Master's degree in educational psychology from Columbia University. It was Dick who coined the term polygraphist. In 1964 he founded the New York State Polygraphists and the New Jersey Polygraphists. He was also instrumental in the founding of the American Polygraph Association in 1966. When the APA school accreditation requirements were changed in the mid-1970s and schools were required to modify their curriculum to maintain accreditation, Dick withdrew his school from their purview, though he remained a member of the APA, and in 2002 the APA presented him with the prestigious John E. Reid award for achievements in teaching, writing, and research.

Dick published his second book, The Scientific Investigator, in 1976, and in the following year he helped found the American Association of Police Polygraphists, which today is the second largest (after the APA) national polygraph association.

In 1977, the House Select Committee on Assassinations selected him as the chief polygraph consultant in their investigation into the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. He worked with Warren D. Holmes, Charles R. Jones, and Ben Malinowski. They reviewed the polygraph tests that had been administered to Yuri Nosenko, Jack Ruby, and James Earl Ray. Their March 1979 reports on Nosenko and Ruby are available at [click here].

Dick dedicated his life to the polygraph profession. Starting in 1966 he published a 4 page bimonthly bulletin, The Journal of Polygraph Science, which he mailed free of charge to any examiner requesting it. He wrote most of the items himself.

Dick trained the first 22 Canadian examiners prior to the establishment of the Canadian Police College's polygraph school. In 1987, he and Cathy conducted training courses for the governments of Mexico and El Salvador, with follow-up training in subsequent years. Dick also trained two examiners from Iran prior to the fall of the Shah, and six from Lebanon.

On May 2, 1997, Dick and Cathy were in a major car accident. Both recovered, but three years later Dick suffered an allergic reaction to his heart medication, and was confined to a wheel chair. Cathy was his caretaker around the clock for the remainder of his life. Although he was no longer able to conduct exams personally, Dick assisted by preparing test questions and reviewing the charts.

This summer Dick and Cathy had just completed a trip he had wanted to take since childhood: retracing the route of Lewis & Clark from St. Charles Missouri to the Oregon coast. They were on their way home, and had stopped for the night at the Paradise campground east of St. Regis, Montana on the banks of the Clark Fork River in Lolo National Forest. About 4:45 p.m. he had difficulty breathing. He died painlessly in less than five minutes, with his boots on. His spirit lives on in the lives and successes of all the students he trained for over half a century.

reprinted with the author's permission from the July / August issue of the American Polygraph Association newsletter