I am having deja vu of the West Memphis 3 trials. Sticks not being taken as evidence until after the scene was opened, portions and complete interviews missing, conflicting eyewitness statements, making the crime fit the evidence instead of the opposite. Next is false confessions. JMO
Should they have taken the sticks right away? Yes. Would it have helped catch the killer? Almost certainly not.
Some small town police department accidentally recording over a couple interviews that were also hand recorded? Not a big deal.
Witnesses not agreeing? Standard.
Every case I’ve followed has had some massive mistakes. Whether it be law enforcement not discovering a body right under their nose, missing obvious blood evidence and allowing residents to remain in a property for days after a murder (seen this multiple times), failure to follow up major leads right away, etc.
The major mistake here was not only the misfiling of that interview with Allen, but the failure to discover it until years had passed. That sent them on a wild goose chase, and likely allowed evidence to be lost to time.
That mistake, large as it was, does not mean that everything should be looked through that lens. This task force looked at countless suspects, and did their due diligence.
They encountered a crime that by its very nature, is the hardest to solve. It was committed by a stranger, occurred outdoors, no one actually saw it happen, and the killer left no DNA.
They were reliant upon witnesses who recognized the man they saw as BG, but could not aid in his identification.
They could develop a timeline, but not a name.
Until they saw something they should have seen all along, followed up, and were gifted the probable cause via Allen, they needed to finally help unmask BG.
I look at this and I of course see issues. I’ve seen them before, and I’ll see them again. Nothing raises this to the level of “Keystone Cops” though.
“Omg, they didn’t do a rape kit.”
“They lied about the video.”
“They didn’t take more photographs so now chain of custody is in doubt.”
“They didn’t see the bodies that night, so they must have been moved”.
“They needed someone to pin this on so they chose Allen.”
Naw.