I agree that I have difficulty picturing TN digging a grave or throwing a body in a dumpster or to the alligators etc. If Misty did something to Haleigh, no way she would have asked her grandmother to help with the dirty work. I don't know how far she would go to cover for Ronald but it seems pretty extreme to me to suggest he'd have asked his mother to hide the body. I dunno... I can better picture him hiding the body himself and asking her to lie for him to help with the alibi, but in what kind of relationship can you call your mother and tell her, "hey, I'm at work now, please can you drop by at home and hide my daughter's body?" Maybe I've just got an imagination deficiency but it seems very unlikely to me. Are there cases in which a mother has helped to do that for their adult sons? I can't remember any offhand.
Still, I'm not convinced that everybody who's ever helped to hide a body is completely devoid of emotion and caring. There appears to be a serious potential for serious dysfunction but still, often people are shocked when they find out what the people they thought pretty normal have done, saying they wouldn't have believed it of them. It may not always be just a front and in reality they've been horrible abusers and full of evil all their life; I think sometimes even pretty normal people may end up taking part in or covering up crimes in extreme circumstances.
Not that it's ever a right thing to do, but sometimes it might be that even though you used to love the person who died very much or at least passably well, when he/she dies you are full of grief but because of whatever happened you're also overcome by an instinct of self-preservation and fear or a misguided parental protective instinct that takes over. You're afraid that you or someone you care about is going to end up in big trouble, maybe even looking at the possibility of death row, and somehow among all the conflicting emotions that fear takes the priority over the desire to have the deceased properly buried and honored and the desire for justice and truth to prevail. They might rationalize that dead is dead and nothing will bring them back and we didn't mean for this to happen and what will happen to the other kids if their dad is in jail for life, and they've already lost one loved one, they don't want to lose the perp as well, and fear the shame and notoriety for the whole family if everything is revealed etc. Maybe those are not admirable emotions but I'm not sure having them completely rules out the possibility that they might have loved the deceased person and had a host of other human emotions as well.
