I believe that is what the guy who falsely confessed to killing Jon-Banet Ramsey did.
The guy in the OP sounds like he might be ready to plead guilty.
Whey else confess after 30 years?
Because he’s nuts. Or to use the clinical term, a couple of tacos short of a combination platter.
Perhaps he knows things about the crime that only the police and the murderer could know.
He knows the victim intimately. He is likely to be familiar with the scene of the crime also. He left no physical evidence of his presence at the crime scene (I assume that’s what is meant in the OP by no physical evidence at the crime scene since there has to be at least a body for there to be a crime scene). So there’s some possibility he still has the murder weapon or can tell the police something that only the murderer and no one else could possibly have known, beyond a reasonable doubt. It seems more likely that anything he says could be based on his knowledge of the victim, public information, or just a guess that can’t be confirmed. Since the police never considered him a suspect he must have had an alibi, legitimate of not. So overcoming that even by admission is still problematic.
According to the OP, no one even knew he was dating the victim, so he wouldn’t need an alibi. Seems unlikely, but we can’t fight the hypothetical.
Right, missed that. So it makes his confession even more suspect, though at least it’s an opening for an investigation.
That’s fighting the hypothetical. There is nothing linking him to the crime.
Taking that in its most literal sense, he can’t be lawfully convicted of the crime in the US of A. That being said, The OP could be read to mean nothing known yet to connect him to the crime and through his admission something could be found. But as noted before, the 30 year time gap and otherwise lack of credibility in his confession makes that very difficult to do.
Even if he knows unpublished details of the crime, there would still need to be an investigation. It’s entirely possible he got those details from the real murderer and is being cooerced or is mentally ill.
My interpretation of the OP was that there was nothing linking him to the crime and hence he was not a suspect, but once he is suspected it may be possible to uncover evidence.
If not, then his confession would go into the file and be forgotten just like any crank confession. A true confession without evidence looks identical to a false confession.
That’s the hurdle to overcome before the case advances at all.
I think that’s an incorrect interpretation. The OP isn’t asking whether the police would reopen a cold case under these circumstances - I imagine they would.
The OP was asking whether prosecutors would move forward with a case absent any evidence whatsoever. Without any evidence other than “well he seems sane enough,” I can’t see how they would.
I’m not so sure there would be as much scrutiny of the confession as people think, not in America anyway. Henry Lee Lucas confessed to all kinds of murders he couldn’t have committed and the show didn’t stop until a journalist started asking questions. There’s a good documentary about it on Netflix.
Lucas wasn’t a guy who never even had so much as a traffic ticket.
No, but he was a guy who couldn’t possibly be where some of the murders occurred and who got basic crime scene facts wrong. If you want to false confess to a murder, there is a pretty good chance they’ll let you.
You’re glossing over some really critical things here. Why is he credible? What is his story that “adds up”? If he is providing enough detail in his story to make his confession credible, wouldn’t he by definition giving them enough evidence to convict him? Because that would be necessary for credibility to be established.
I think there is an incorrect assumption being made in this OP, that a person can be both credible but that there is nothing to tie him to the crime. If nothing ties him to the crime, his claims are not credible.
The other problem is:
So any physical evidence - DNA on her or insde her, his fingerprints at the crime scene, items tied to him left behind - many could have a perfectly innocent explanation since this was his girlfriend and no doubt they interacted regularly at her place.
Again, the questin is - is he sticking with his confession or recanting? If he recants, and there is no other evidence, then there’s no grounds to charge him. If he’s sticking with his confession, I guess this is the crux of the OP’s question - can the prosecutor proceed to arraignment and/or preliminary hearing based on a confession with no corroborating details, nothing to distinguish this from a false confession?
IIRC plenty of people have been convicted based on coerced or fabricated confessions, so the truth and the facts can sometimes be irrelevant to the prosecution… But usually in these cases, it’s circumstantial- “A car like your was seen near the scene”, or “the perp was wearing the same sort of hat and jacket” or “the perp had the same skin colour”.
Strictly speaking, isn’t “no evidence” contradictory? Because his confession would, itself, be a piece of evidence, wouldn’t it?
Yes. But it’s not physical evidence which the OP specified. And as an individual eyewitness, and a biased one at that, his testimony will likely require corroboration under the law.
There must be physical evidence that a crime occurred, in this case a body, otherwise there’s no crime to consider. A woman missing for 30 years may be presumed dead, but without further evidence can’t be presumed to be the victim of a homicide.
The character in the book was found out obliquely. I haven’t mentioned the title of the book so I don’t think I’m treading on thin ice spoiler-wise here, but long story short: he got found out because he had written a confession to his wife after their first daughter was born. It was in an envelope marked “To Be Open Upon My Death.” His wife found it, and the rest of the book (at least, that much of it that concerns his side of the story) is about the fallout from his being found out. The matter of whether or not he would, or should, confess to the cops is a plot point (he hasn’t yet, with 1:06:43 left on the audiobook). I was just trying to posit what would happen if he did confess to the cops.
Yes, there was a body, I’m sorry if I didn’t make that clear in Post #1. The guy had strangled her to death, so no murder weapon, unless his hands count.