He also didn’t have a lawyer during that month of torture. It’s horrible to think that he may have been innocent.
It truly is horrible if he didn't do it. I know that a lot of prisoners say they are innocent, but a few of them really are innocent. He was only 17 when arrested and spent his whole life in prison. My oldest is 15. I can't imagine him having his whole life taken away from him in a couple of years. The police were under pressure to find the person responsible and he might have just happened to have been a convenient scapegoat. He was a petty thief, but maybe not a murderer? Only God knows.
Funny enough, I was watching Discovery ID yesterday and they did a story that I had previously seen on another show. It was about a teenage boy and his two friends. The boy’s younger sister was murdered in the family home. For some reason the police honed in on the boy. After much interrogation, sleep deprivation, and abuse the boy and one of the friends confessed they did it just so the interrogation would stop. Turns out it was a transient/schizo that had been in the area and knocking on doors that day looking for a girl he liked to share drugs with. The boy was only 14. The videos of him being interrogated were so sad. He kept insisting he didn’t do it, but finally gave in.