Three dead girls and a man on death row. Did lies put him there?

One by one, in the summer of 1984, teenage girls vanished off the streets of this historic town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada. “So I came back feeling like I have to tell them something, but I don’t know what I know.” And it was then, police reports and trial transcripts show, that Napoletano’s story started to shift. According to her testimony in court records, police had told Napoletano, falsely, that webbed footprints had been found at one of the crime scenes, footprints that could have been left by Sindle’s webbed feet. In an interview about the case given to investigators years later during Cox’s appeals process, Wilson said that this blow left the prosecutor “going ballistic.” He had to quickly find a way to bolster Napoletano’s testimony. During that process, investigators for Cox spoke with Wilson, who defended his investigation, saying that “his gut reaction was that more than one person was involved in the murders,” and that “Darlene knew more than she was saying.” When it came to Napoletano, Wilson said she was “truthful but may have embellished some ‘factual matters.’” It took years, and upon completion, Dozier’s report spanned more than 1,000 pages.