Without the statement from SJ, I'm not so sure that DE would have been a suspect. The reason that the wmpd brought JM in for questioning was because VH said that JM knew DE, IIRC. That's where it began. VH was in the station with her son trying to straighten out her own legal tangle. IIRC, VH was in the station around the time the boy's bodies were discovered. She knew that her son was friends with the murdered boys. IMO (and it's just my opinion), she saw a way to unwind her own personal tangle. Of course, if the wmpd had conducted an evidence-led rather than suspect-driven investigation, we might not have had the cluster****** that we have in this case!
Again, IMO, DE, JB and JM were "railroaded" because of the pressure on the police to solve the case. Remember, it had been almost a month since the murders with no arrest. Of course, due to SJ's statement, DE and JB were suspected (and questioned) early on, but there was no evidence against them until JM was coerced, or brow beaten, into his pitiful statement. Then, after the "clarification" required by Judge Rainey, the police arrested DE and JB based on what most people believe to be a false and coerced statement.
Welcome, thared33! Oh how I miss the information we lost on the BB!
DE would still have been a suspect because of the softball girls and because of the Hollingsworth's supposed sighting of him on the service road. It wasn't just Jones and Driver or the WMPD who "railroaded" them. That's my point. The evidence was iffy if not complete b.s. at best, granted, but there was more to it than Jones and Driver. Factor in all these things with an over-anxious and inexperienced police department, and you have a recipe for disaster.