Haven't they had the ability to put the squeeze on KK for more than 5 years?
He's been in custody for more than 2 years.
This.
The only way they got info from him is if it was piecemeal bit by bit and they connected the dots. I've said from the beginning I thought the phone/sm connection was key.
And then they find out the girls were doing exactly what we don't want kids doing online, the most dangerous thing they possibly could be doing unbeknowst to them (because they're innocent KIDS they trust so easily) and when a bad thing happens, ESPECIALLY IN A SMALL TOWN, of course the chances of this being connected is extremely high. If LE weren't focused on it to some degree, then they would've been negligent by any investigative standards.
BUT... and I'm not privy to this investigation, but LE esp high profile, do have the means to track the IP etc where those online convos could have originated from. Not just screen names.
So if he was involved in that aspect, and that's very very possible, then they would have been able narrow it down to him without too much of a challenge and he at least would have been in their radar. And that may be the case.
But the one little thing that gives me pause, is that I think they've been "reaching" and doing trial by error for 4 years. Throwing noodles at the wall. The changing perp renditions to ignoring some witnesses until they got someone in their radar that fit her description, then a new drawing is released... the emotional appeal at the one conference (which actually told me that they had nothing. When experts in this stuff start going emotional DURING an investigation and the professional mask is dropped publicly, it's usually out of despair and frustration.
So either they got a lucky break in this case that has nothing to do with anything they've been trying or they have bit by bit been putting together info from kk AND THEN were able to use that to secure some physical evidence. I don't see how they made the arrest that confidently without some physical evidence, but hey, stranger things have happened. But there's no way kk just suddenly squealed everything. He's been a very slow drip.