I'm not sure which topic this should go under. I need some information and input on this situation. I apologize in advance for the length of this post.
On December 29th my nephew was murdered in Texas. According to the one and only newspaper article, he died of blunt force trauma. His 19-year-old stepson was arrested at the scene and held on $250,000 bond.
My sister, my nephew's mother, lives in my hometown in upstate New York. Her youngest son and his wife also live in the same town. The police in Texas called the police in my hometown in New York, and a local police officer went to my youngest nephew's place of work and broke the news of his brother's murder to him.
To make this story easier to understand, I need to give a little background. My nephew that was murdered was born and raised in upstate New York. He married and had three children, and later he and his wife divorced. It was a bitter divorce and when his company offered him a promotion to work on a start-up team for a new company in Texas, he took the job. A few years later he met and married a woman in Texas, who had been previously married and had a ten-year-old son. A few years after they married they had a daughter, who is now almost 7 years old.
In the 9 years since my nephew married his second wife, my sister has briefly met her twice, and has met her granddaughter once, although she regularly talks on the phone with her granddaughter and they exchange letters. No one in the family really knows anything about the second wife. Also in the past 9 years, in conversations with his mother, my nephew complained about his stepson. As the boy got older, he got into drugs and sometime in the past two years was arrested for theft.
In the days following the murder my sister and her youngest son and daughter (who lives in North Carolina), spoke with the police in Texas on a regular basis. To date, they've never told the family what happened. All we know is that my nephew went outside his home, which is in a rural area, and was hit with a baseball bat. His wife called 911 and my nephew was dead when the police arrived. A Justice of the Peace ordered an autopsy, there was an inquest at the scene, and the stepson was arraigned and held on $250,000 bond. Since then the police have said that the stepson admitted guilt and he was being charged with murder one.
My sister and niece have called the wife and asked her what happened, and her response is, "I don't know." All she has said is that my nephew went outside, and that's all she knows.
After being in jail for three weeks, someone bailed the stepson out of jail. We don't know who posted bail, but know that my nephew's wife couldn't possibly make bail. She works as a clerk in a store, and they had no savings or a large amount of equity in a home. The wife does have several brothers and sisters and we suspect they may have been able to post bail. The detective called my niece and told her that they were surprised when bail was met, as they had set it high enough that they didn't expect it to be made.
My sister was shocked to learn that upon his release from jail, the stepson moved back in with his mother and stepsister - my sister's granddaughter. The stepson is babysitting with her while his mother works. My sister and niece called the wife and were shocked when the stepson answered the phone. My sister asked the wife if having the stepson living there was a wise idea, and the wife's response was, "My son isn't violent." My sister's son has been murdered, and his alleged killer is now living in his home and babysitting with his daughter, my sister's granddaughter.
In subsequent conversations with my niece, less than a month after the murder, the wife said, "what's happened is over, I'm moving on with my life. She also doesn't seem to think what happened is wrong. She's not acting like a grieving widow.
The detective called my niece last week and told her that the case is going before the grand jury in February or March and he's 99% certain of an indictment. He said, "with all the evidence we have.....they will indict." But, we still don't know what happened.
My niece called the newspaper that carried the one and only article on the murder and spoke to the reporter that wrote the article. She asked if he was at the crime scene and if there was anything more than what was reported in the newspaper. He said he wasn't at the scene and that he wrote the article from the intitial police report and an interview with a detective. He said, "they're playing this one close to their chest" in reference to the police.
My questions: Can anyone think of a reason why the police would be so mum about this case - why they won't tell the family what happened. They seem confident of getting an indictment, but still are mum on what happened and what sort of evidence they have. We know nothing about Texas law and the procedure for a criminal case. Do all criminal cases in Texas go to the grand jury? If the grand jury indicts, what happens next? What exactly is "murder one?" If convicted, what sort of prison time is likely?
No one in the family wants to do anything that will put the case in jeopardy, but just what to know what happened.
