The thing is, how often do you hear about someone killing a family member to cover up years of sexual abuse? The small amount of victims who are killed are almost always killed by strangers who want to get rid of a witness or because it is part of their fantasy. Family member molestation seems to surprisingly rarely turn violent, given what's at stake. The molesters seem to believe they can keep it quiet through their manipulative relationship with the victim. And I still don't have a good theory as to how it could have been an accident. This case just baffles me.
If there was ongoing abuse, which I am not personally convinced there was,
it does not mean that it is relevent to the killing. The Steve Thomas theory was that Patsy lost her temper over bedwetting and caused the head blow in a fury, but not meaning to injure her so severely.
Not saying that is the correct theory, however I personally lean toward a version of that myself. Not so much that it was brought on by the bedwetting, although it's plausable. Then, when the staging took place she wanted it to look like the actions of a sexual sadist. Or a kidnapper who apparently could not control himself long enough to exit the house so instead took her to a hidden room with a tricky light switch that was cluttered with crap. Or whatever.
I think the staging was all over the place because P was unsure of exactly what the scene "should" look like, so she went a bit overboard, not surprising under the circumstance. It worked, almost 20 years later and we are still trying to figure it out.
At any rate, my point is that it is entirely possible that the ongoing molestaion, if it occurred, was
not relevent to what happened that night.
Not every single piece has to fit together to make them guilty. It's a preponderance of the evidence.
