I did not go to the Colleton County courthouse to write a book. I went as a spectator – a true-crime reader like anyone else, expecting the evidence to confirm what the coverage had told me.
Then came the day of the DNA testimony. I sat riveted, and then profoundly uncomfortable, as the questions accumulated: DNA that was present and unexplained, DNA that was absent where the State’s theory said it should be, and testing decisions that were never pressed on cross-examination. By the end of that day I realized they could convict the wrong man – not because I knew who was guilty, but because the proof in that room did not match the certainty outside it.
That discomfort became three years of work: the transcripts, the exhibits, the timeline, and the questions about other suspects that the “guilty” chorus never asked.
The full analysis is in The Closing Argument for the Man in the Circle, coming Spring 2027 – before the retrial puts these questions to a second jury. Start with the DNA evidence.