I know people who have met this guy and he used to use distraction ploys all of the time (for other reasons not related to this).
Your scenario does not account for why Joe Ray would have confessed to a particularly heinous murder.
People who know a guy, that knows a guy, that knows another guy???
The confession still has to be proven by evidence.
Now I don't know if they have evidence to cooperate the confession?
I don't know what evidence they gathered from the house?
I do know what the search warrant listed.
I do know that forensic analysis takes time to process, longer than three days so certainly longer than the time between Joe's disappearance and the fathers arrest.
They could have found blood on the knives they took from the house. That blood still has to analysed. For all we know the blood work could come back with the DNA of a cow from their last steak dinner.
Then what?
Without a body where is the proof to cooperate the confession?
Without blood evidence he died in that house, without a body how can the prosecution prove he's even dead let alone murdered....
Because someone he went to high school with 10+ years ago says he's got a temper???
People confess under duress to things they didn't do all the time. It is not all that uncommon for confessions to be recanted and thrown out because of coercion. What if they confronted him with loose or even false evidence and managed to even manipulate him into believing Joe died in the house. He might have confessed believing he could protect his wife or older son? We don't know how that went down. We wont know until the trial.
I don't even think it was the sherriff who took the confession. I believe it was the TBI....
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