Something else I am thinking about right now, just going to put this out there and hope it comes across clearly and understandable. Could they (prosecution, Mollie's family and friends, etc.) have known or expected this to some degree? As I have followed this case, I've found the coverage and particularly the timing of coverage about Mollie's family's views on not making this about immigration and/or her mother taking in the boy very interesting and even odd. They were slammed for their views and virtue signaling hard (I'm not getting into if that is right or wrong, that's not where I am going with this post). If we now look at this through different lenses, could those news releases and timing of them been more about the prosecution knowing and suspecting very early on, like much sooner than they have told us, that this crime was possibly committed by someone here illegally? Maybe they wanted to get out in front of it from the get-go, knew where a defense would most-likely go in saying the individual was being picked on because of this, and wanted to try and take the wind out of their sails? Could they have advised/asked Mollie's family to say what they did and when it was said? Maybe it wasn't the virtue signaling they were slammed for but an effort to make it clear whoever was prosecuted for this crime was done so because of the heinousness/evidence/guilt, not immigration status? I personally have always questioned the comments by her father, the stories on taking the boy in, etc., and especially when those things surfaced. They always seemed oddly said, released, and/or printed, especially coming from people who had lost so much and who one would think were in the beginning stages of extreme distress and pain, some of them coming before we even knew a suspect or that he was illegal. Examples...when the terrible robo-call went out full of explitives about illegals and Mollie. Right after, her dad gave statements/wrote columns that he didn't believe this and didn't want it to become part of the story. Or the lengthy, over-the-top story about how great her mother was for taking in a boy, who low and behold is related to this ugly mess. Could these things not necessarily have been their views, but asked of the family again, as a way of taking the "feel sorry for me" elements away from any defense that would attempt to mount them? To keep the focus on the brutality/evidence of guilt, not the "Woes me and my hard life of growing up in a one room house, coming and working illegally in a country for little money (sending whatever I could back to my poor family), the unending oppression I have faced, to the point it made me snap when I couldn't have something I wanted?" Does this make any sense? Maybe I am totally off my rocker here but there is something I can't put my finger on with regards to this and I keep thinking it over. Maybe too much. MOO.