I agree with your thoughts. However, I am still hung up on the weights from his dads business, the location of the dump site for little Bella, and the fact he played dumb about her disappearance. He had gotten those texts from his friend, so he knew RB was accusing him. I don't buy that he is stupid. Druggies learn to con to get their drugs and survive. I suspect he might have been a little less trusting of RB. I don't give him a free pass. I think those texts he sent about Bella was a con. Remember, he was giving his friend advice on how to con the doctors for drugs. He allegedly got her to let her cable go because it was an instrument for spying. He would know if something came up about Bella the phones would be taken.
These things bother me.
The advice to Sprinsky on how to get a doctor to prescribe the drugs Sprinsky wanted... yes, but if you look at the actual advice, MM was basically telling Sprinsky to tell the truth about his life and to admit he has had a lifelong drug problem. He didn't really advise too much in the way of conning?
I am very confused after listening to the audio file of the police talking to MM in his hospital bed, and also was wondering about the actual texts exchanged between Sprinsky and MM on the day RB 'confessed' Bella's death to Sprinsky.
In the audio file of the police talking to MM he's saying he doesn't really know why they want to speak to him. I do recall that when Sprinsky said whatever he did in those texts that seemed to imply it was just ravings from RB and that Bella was with DCF, not dead, and MM claimed RB was just trying to cause trouble for him.
Several days after those texts, I don't know what drugs he had in hospital, whether they were dosing him with methadone or if he was on hospital prescribed pain pills or what? His voice sounds a bit 'out of it'? He does have some confusion going on there regarding how long ago he went to the first hospital, which day that was compared to the day the police are questioning him.
So at what point would a reasonable person infer that the police are there regarding the allegations Sprinsky told him about Bella being dead (murdered by his hand)? And can we assume MM to be a reasonable person (as far as being able to logic out what was happening) in the state he was in?
Is it possible MM might have thought someone could have gone to the police with the allegation that Sprinsky had put to him a few days earlier, but MM was somewhat zoned out between the two events and if anything thought that if there was any connection that it would be proven false by the police simply calling up DCF to find out they had ordered Bella's removal and that she was safe in the custody of a relative or foster family?
MM sounds a bit like he's playing thick when he insists he didn't 'hurt' Bella, but he seems to be meaning that he didn't beat her black and blue, he didn't push her down the stairs, he didn't 'hurt' her in that sense. Only then does the police officer use words that he's being accused of killing Bella and Bella IS dead, at which point MM says, "what? she's dead??"
And then, during the housing hearing that RB went to, MM sent texts that implied he thought Bella was alive (though he also seems to have thought she was somewhere other than with DCF, but I can believe he doesn't have a great understanding of the processes of removing a child from custody and he could have genuinely thought DCF insisted Bella be moved to RB's sister (or someone else))
IF at the point when MM sent those texts to RB during the housing hearing he had genuinely forgotten what he'd done to Bella, and if that continued to be the case, then he wouldn't have been holding it over RB's head with threats to kill her.
If the texts during the housing hearing were an attempt at a red herring, they don't come across that way they way they are positioned in the conversation and the way that MM wants RB to acknowledge she's read the texts. Instead it seems more like MM claims in the police questioning audio that RB was purposely trying not to talk about Bella with RB. Why didn't she reply "you crazy nutter you know full well what you did to Bella, how dare you speak about her like that and upset me when I need to be straight to speak to the housing guy?" But there's no inkling of that from her end?
If the texts during the housing hearing were planned to throw off the trail from him, personally I think it would have been done differently. Far better to smatter little things through texts starting as close to the date of death as possible, and then every few days to every few weeks continue to mention Bella's name in innocent-sounding context. While we haven't been shown every single text between the two of them, I would want to know why something like that hadn't been explicitly shown if it was happening multiple times between June and September.
And, RB claims that MM was threatening to kill her, he was paranoid about her using his spare phone to talk to anyone. Yet on that occasion where MM was texting RB and she didn't answer for more than 12 hours (which I think was an overnight period?) he didn't get angry. He just said that if the phone was lost he needed to know so that he could have the number disabled to save his money. Even in the 'harassing' texts during the housing hearing it sounded more like MM was suspicious that RB had got her welfare check and gone to buy drugs and not share with him, they didn't sound like someone freaking out that she was really at the police station shopping him for murder?