Photo Credit: TakePart

After leaving her home in Marrero, Louisiana, in the afternoon of 19 July 1996, a 14 year-old girl went shopping to a nearby supermarket. When she hadn't returned that evening, her cousin Damon Thibodeaux (then 21) and a few of his neighbors went looking for her. The search continued until the following day. Sometime that day her partially naked body was found. She had been strangled with a wire.

Now each one of the following is absolutely true:

• Damon agreed to a polygraph test, which police said he failed.


• Damon confessed to raping, beating and strangling his cousin - even describing the color of the cord he used.


• Two women said they saw a man pacing and acting nervously near the scene of the crime on the evening of the murder. Both women picked a photo of Damon from a photographic lineup and both identified him at trial.

A failed polygraph, a detailed confession, two eyewitnesses: A slam-dunk case, eh?

Only one problem - Damon didn't do it.

Now all of the following is absolutely true:

• While it is absolutely true that the police said he lied, it is also absolutely true that the police lied - Damon did not fail the polygraph test.


• While it is absolutely true that Damon confessed to raping the girl, it is also absolutely true that she had not in fact been sexually assaulted. The police assumed, because of the partial nakedness of the body, that she had been raped and so coerced Damon into so confessing.


• Damon confessed to strangling her with a gray speaker wire he took from his car, it is also absolutely true that in fact she was strangled with a red cord that had been tied to a tree near the crime scene. DNA testing on the cord used to strangle the young girl pointed to some other male's DNA.


• None of Damon's DNA was found near the body, on the body, or on any evidence at all.


• While it is absolutely true that the two women said they saw him, etc., it is also absolutely true that the date the women sighted the pacing back and forth turned out to be the day after the body was found, when Damon was already in custody. How was it possible for the two women to ID Damon from a photo lineup? Simple: they had already seen Damon's picture in the news media before police showed them the photo line-up.

A re-investigation of the case determined that Thibodeaux’s confession was false. An expert in false confessions concluded that the confession was the result of police pressure, exhaustion, psychological vulnerability and fear of the death penalty.