Carli, in answer to your challenge, imagine there's no evidence and then describe the evidence needed to convict.
Imagine this policing situation: you're a mom, you have a kid, and you want them to not eat between meals.
Well, you go into the kitchen and it's apparent that someone made a sandwich. You do NOT have high definition video trained on your kitchen. You didn't see a sandwich made, and there is no sign of the sandwich - it's gone - but all signs are that a sandwich was made.
How do you know this? Well, the bread has been disturbed, the margarine and mayo are at the front of the fridge shelf instead of buried in the back there. There is a wet tip on the mustard bottle. Someone didn't close the bologna package properly, there is less bologna, there is juice from a sliced tomato, you find the rest of it in the garbage, crumbs everywhere, some attempt to cover tracks in that a butterknife and a chef's knife are in the dishrack (because your kid thinks this is all you have to do to make things clean enough that you don't notice). There is no smoking gun but all this evidence taken together, I can describe the sandwich quite well.
Did a sandwich happen?
When did this happen?
Where did this happen?
Did someone cause a sandwich to happen?
Did someone intend to cause a sandwich to happen?
Did your kid make the sandwich?
Further investigation shows that you are missing a plate, and you find the plate in your kid's room, covered in crumbs and a smear of mayo, and also the wrapper to a slice of process cheese in their waste can. Your kid tried to hide what they were up to but they ended up tying themselves directly to the action. (This is like DM hiding the truck on his mom's property and the remains at his farm).
How else do you know it was your kid? Your spouse is at work, your other kid was with you, and the kid you suspect has a habit of doing this (lack of alibi, DM stole a Harley, DM stole a truck) and they were talking about bologna and mustard hours ago, asked you to put it on the grocery list (DM's calls to LB and TB).
Making the sandwich (and attempting to hide the signs) is so complex that it is clearly intentional. Someone intended to make that sandwich. It didn't happen by accident or recklessness.
So, anyway, you are going to have to talk to your spouse about this and see if you are going to ground this kid or take away their screen time. You document everything (pictures, words, just like a coroner's report). Then you clean the kitchen because life moves on and you can't preserve a mess forever. Because you cleaned up, is there now no evidence, even if I have documented it all beforehand, and your spouse sees myou as a reliable reporter? (Just because evidence is destroyed when it is no longer useful after being documented, does not mean evidence never existed/does not exist.)
In fact over time your kid is getting fatter (Just the passage of time will help build a case, e.g., that LB is dead.)
Your spouse gets home and you go to confront your kid. The kid is smug. "You didn't see me make a sandwich and there's no video of me making a sandwich!" they cry. "I didn't make a sandwich!" and your spouse and you look at each other and shake your heads and say, the little bugger thinks like a 12 year old. Well, they're 12. I guess that's acceptable.
GROUNDED!
