People like that can live with themselves just fine. They justify their actions, which is exactly what JR did. He can convince himself that he did it to protect what was left of his family, so as not to put his young son and cancer-survivor wife through the trauma of a trial and the publicity. Now, of course there was plenty of publicity- this case was known around the country, if not the world. But it would have been vastly different for all the Rs had it been an outright admission of guilt, or had there been a trial with a guilty verdict.