Flase Confession: Kevin Fox exonerated by DNA evidence

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After our class discussion on false confession during Tuesday's class I have been noticing the integration techniques we discussed is class. One news report on the E channel stood out above the rest. Kevin Fox's 3 year old girl was said to be missing on the morning of June 6th 2004. Kevin's wife Melissa was in Chicago for the weekend therefore he was home by himself with Tyler and the later missing daughter Riley. Police investigated the crime scene however, when police continued the investigation they ignored a lot of the evidence indicated there was an intruder. Instead investigators went after father Kevin Fox. The interrogation of Kevin Fox lasted 14 ½ hours. Over this time Kevin had asked to speech to his brother and a lawyer. Police told him that he did not need to speech to anyone and just needed to confess that he killed and sexually assaulted his daughter Riley. Police used tactics such as telling Kevin that if he didn't confess then there were some inmates in jail that would make him pay for what he did. They even went as far as to lie by stating that Melissa was going to divorce him if he did not cooperate with them. The interesting this about this statement is that Melissa stayed by Kevin's side throughout the entire investigation and police never said she would divorce him if he didn't tell the truth, they said she would divorce him if he did "cooperate" with them.  Eventually after this horrible interrogation Kevin admitted to killing his daughter using the information authorities gave him during his interrelation to make up his story.

 

After the confession investigator told the FBI to stop DNA testing. Kevin spent 8 months in jail before he would be cleared through the DNA testing that the FBI stopped.  Interestingly enough this is also the same procedure that was used during the interrogation of JonBenet Ramsey. Both fathers in this cases we told the killing of their daughter was an accident and they were trying to cover it up, and both fathers were exonerated by DNA evidence that in both cases were originally never carried out.

 

 

Below are a couple of links to some highlights of the ABC broadcast of the situation. The whole hour version of the episode in the links below because they were presented in parts and I was unable to find all the video clips. However, if you are interested there is a lot of information about the case on the ABC website if you search for either Kevin Fox or Riley Fox.

 

Introduction to the Case and the 911 phone call

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6210664

 

News article:Kevin Fox and his statements on the integration process.

http://www.truthinjustice.org/kevin-fox.htm

 

Video Clip about DNA exoneration of Kevin Fox

http://abcnews.go.com/video/playerIndex?id=6210784

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1 Comment

This case is a very sad one. Its just a prime example of how evil our justice system can be though. I cant believe that the police ignored the fact that there was evidence that there was an intruder. All they cared about was gettin a confession; not gettin the right person. 14.5 hours of interigation is a LONG time. I cant even imagine what that was like. The police coerced him to confess. I also cant believe that once he confessed, they stopped the DNA from being processed. It was almost like they were trying to hide the fact that they were going to be wrong, and didnt want anybody to find out. There is no reason to stop DNA testing, even if someone does confess. DNA is concrete evidence; its pretty hard to minipulate that. When you have DNA evidence, that should always be processed. I'm just glad that they figured out he was innocent after 8 months. Thats still a long time in jail, but at least it wasnt years and he can still have a life with his wife and other child.

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