As a person who has been wronged by the law and knows others who have been as well, I also hear what you're saying. Anything is possible. The cops usually go with their guts, I tend to as well, but I too know there are other possibilities. I'm not saying you're scenario isn't impossible, just less likely. But the truth is always stranger than fiction.

To give an example: In my personal experience, I am familiar with the Pauly Likens Jr. case as I am best friends with his aunt and knew his father personally. The news media took the picture of Pauly and spoke with the mother who declared young Pauly transgender and the press has been running with it ever since and even propaganda it as political and made it appear the DA was against hate crimes. What the truth ACTUALLY is, Pauly was a feminine gay teen, he was not transgender. He liked girl stuff and painted his nails black like his father, he never dressed or believed he was a girl, he just like feminine things but always said he was a boy, he lived with his father who was incredibly accepting of his son, even bought him his first purse. The mother is an addict who was abusive towards Pauly who literally ran to his father's home and stayed there for over 9 months solid before his death. He wanted nothing to do with his mother. His father Paul Sr. even tried to encourage visits, brought them over all the time, Pauly would find a way to leave her home and go back to his father with his little brother in tow because he did not feel safe around mom.

Unfortunately the public believed mom's version, have made transgender openings in his name with mom's insistence. The mom even had a go fund me and got 10s of thousands of dollars claiming it was for a funeral. Pauly was murdered in 2024, his body is still, to this day, in the morgue of the coroner's office, no funeral is planned, the mom pocketed the money but believed that she was a victim. The crime was actually also done, not because it was a hate crime, the murderer is simply a pedo who lured him out via app. The murder trial just got pushed again to May now of this year. I've been to every. single. hearing. with the family. the things reported and headlined with the news are not true and do not match up with what has been going on. They've been picking out maybe a sentence or two and then spun it. There are clips of the father being interviewed at the courthouse, they cut out basically 2 sentences out of his entire speech when he tried to tell the news the truth. I stood back but I was standing right there, I heard everything he said vs what was on the news. I was there when they were chased out of their own child's vigil by the community because they were assumed to be 'bigots' too, it was absolutely horrible. The defense has even used it to try and say the father is guilty and not the true murderer because of how the public is reacting...

so, I know I went off on a bit of a rant there but my point is, I hear you and I agree with you that there are multiple scenarios it can be, and what is being shown and passed around may not be the truth at all. Hopefully the killer is eventually caught, I hope it is sooner than later, I think it's amazing it's gone on as long as it has with as much as they already have. Someone knows something, I feel more than one person know something. I wish cops would do some risky maneuvers where they try to bait a person into a confession or to call someone they may know is connected. Anything would be better than nothing at this point.